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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf. .VV'.SL 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




THE 



DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY 



OR 



EQUALITY IN THE DEALINGS OF GOD 

WITH MEN 



BY REV. LORENZO WHITE, A.M. 





NEW YORK 

PRINTED BY HUNT &: EATON 

150 Fifth Avenue 

1892 



.v4 



6 Cj 



Copyright, 1892, by 
LORENZO WHITE, 

North Wilbramam, 
Mass. 



NOTE TO THE READER, 



It may be due to the reader to say that the book 
offered to liis attention is not a treatise for conven- 
ience divided into chapters, but consists rather in a 
series of articles on the question at issue viewed in dif- 
ferent relations. The longer articles are intended to 
be each somewhat complete in itself from its own view- 
point, and there is no article of the series which may 
not be read apart from the place assigned it. This 
fact, however, it is believed will not make the connec- 
tion of the series as here arranged less natural and 
helpful. 

The question of equality involves that of freedom, 
and is wide in its relations, and no theory can be true 
which w^ill not stand the test of scrutiny from the 
various points of view which they give. On the 
other hand, the doctrine which can bear this test finds 
in the cumulative evidence thus gained the most satis- 
factory proof. To secure this advantage our question 
is considered in distinct articles as it stands related to 
other truths. This plan naturally brings occasionally 
into view the same thought though in different con- 
nections. 

To avoid, as far as may be, a running controversy 



4 NOTE TO THE READER. 

with opponents on disputed points so likely to be ob- 
scure if not unfair, I have sought in this work to state 
and support with comparatively little reference to the 
views of others what is to me truth on the question 
treated, leaving the reader to make his own compari- 
son of results with the conclusions of others who have 
surveyed this field. 

Doubtless the book has defects. It claims only to 
be the work of a disciple who has studied Christian 
doctrine and philosophy with a single eye to truth. The 
conclusion of the whole — absolute freedom upon ac- 
countable issues, and for all perfect equality of oppor- 
tunity for securing the divine favor — is commended to 
the attention of all candid disciples. L. W. 

North Wilbraham, Mass. 



CONTENTS 



L PAGE 

The Question 1 

11. 
The True Conceptiox of Christianity Democratic 23 

III. 
Lower Forms of Freedom Under Natural Law — Liberty. . . 33 

lY. 
Higher Freedom with Power of Choice Under Moral Law 
— Probation 49 

Y. 

Probation and Redemption ; or, Spiritual P]volution 69 

YL 
The New Birth into Freedom ; or, Spiritual Biogenesis 93 

YIL 
Equality in Probation a Postulate of Faith 127 

YIII. 
TiiE Tendency of Modern Christian Thought 133 

IX. 
I'he Only Ground on which Probation Can Stand 143 

X. 
A Demand of Justice 151 



6 CONTENTS, 

■^^' PAGE 

The Basis of Responsible Chakacter. . . o » 159 

XIT. 
The Solid Ground of Retribution 169 

XIII. 
Assured in Divine Sovereignty 181 

XIY. 
The End and Aim of Providence „ 203 

XY. 
Our Conclusion Conservative and Reasonable 221 

XYI. 
Exalts Human Responsibility 221 

XYII. 
Meets the Demand of Faith Sought in the Hypotheses of 
Eternal Hope and Future Probation 237 

XYIII. 
Fosters the Missionary Spirit. , „ 255 

XIX. 
Gives Us the True Conception op the Work .of Educating 
Men 2Gt 

XX. 
The Basis of Social and Political Reform 289 

XXI. 
A Word with Herbert Spencer 299 



I. 

THE QUESTION. 



OUTLINE. 



The Thought of the Book. 

An Advance, not a New Departure. 

Current Thought on the Question of Freedom. 

Agnosticism upon the Question. 

Greatness of the Question. 

What Ought to be True. 



THE QUESTION. 



THE THOUGHT OF THE BOOK. 

The right of this book to be rests upon its bring- 
ing into clearer view two closely related truths hitherto 
but dimly seen — the absolute freedom of man upon 
probational issues to choose for himself and form his 
own character, and to all who are held to the respon- 
sibilities of probation perfect equality of opportunity 
for securing the favor of God and eternal life. To 
justify the high claim that Christianity, and alike the 
divine pliilosophy upon which it stands, are thus roy- 
ally democratic is our task. 

Obviously, freedom in man, where he is treated as 
responsible, and equality in the ways of God to man, 
are inseparable, and freedom must, therefore, hold a 
prominent place in the argument for equality. If the 
right or wrong exercise of freedom depends in the 
case of every man solely upon himself, then all must 
have in every responsible moment equal opportunity 
to deserve approval. Words need not be multiplied 
in proof that a responsible subject under an equitable 
moral government must hold in his own hand the 
power to decide which shall dominate in his char- 
acter and determine his destiny, good or evil. With 



10 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

development and responsibility hereditary and sur- 
rounding influences not in our control have much to 
do — how much the heavenly Father knows perfectly 
and regards strictly ; but with the question of every 
one's standing with God where God holds him ac- 
countable they have nothing to do. 

Christianity is the kingdom of heaven come down 
to the child of earth, calling him to the high trust of 
a fair probation, and providing for him redemption 
from the flesh and sin, with all needed helps to enable 
him to bear his own part well. To this end for all 
who are thus called to accountable freedom its provis- 
ions are equal and perfect. Every individual of the hu- 
man family was made to be a child of God, and in the 
Christian plan of redemption holds a central place as 
truly as though he were the only child. In responsible 
character every man is just what he makes himself. 

It is true Christianity holds up to us motives to 
well-doing, and looks for action on our part in view 
of them not to be expected in their absence. But the 
way men are influenced to right moral action differs 
radically from the methods by which they are swayed 
on the lower planes of life. The natural man is con- 
trolled by the incentives which appeal to natural in- 
clination. Thus, doubtless, come in large part the 
activities of mankind. Partly this is in the provi- 
dential order. We all innocently do our own pleas- 
ure till we find our pleasure prohibited by a Power 
above us. 



THE QUESTION H 

But the motives of the Gospel are not forces act- 
ing npon the sensibility nor upon the will ; they are 
the persuasives of reason addressed to the faculty of 
reason, and their office is to open the way to freedom 
and furnish us opportunity to make w^isdom our life- 
choice. Eight moral action is self-controlled action, 
and the motives to such action are inspirations to 
self-control. Not all have equal trusts, but every man 
equally with every other man is able to keep his own 
trust. The only contingency, therefore, as to the per- 
fect realization of the heavenly Father's ideal in our 
lives is the right use of our freedom. 

A personal acceptance of Christ as Saviour and 
Master is the reasonable condition of a distinctively 
Christian consciousness ; but surely that is not the 
sole test of probation. Acceptance of Christ, where 
Christ is known, belongs to probation because 
it is a personal moral act. The test of a successful 
probation, however, is not the ecstasy of a Chris- 
tian experience, but personal fidelity to the trust 
of freedom, the result being the attainment of a 
character of acceptable moral worthiness. To his 
own trust each probationer is for himself divinely 
called, be it the one talent of a responsible pagan 
or the five talents of gospel privileges. It is faithful- 
ness to the trust given him — 'Hhe spirit of faith" 
— throughout the trial-life that wins the reward of 
life eternal. Such is, in brief, the doctrine of the 
book. 



12 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 



AN ADVANCE, NOT A NEW DEPARTURE. 

The conclusion reached in these pages antagonizes 
only the pagan philosophy of necessity, which, under 
various disguises, widely perverts and confounds Chris- 
tian thouglit. The doctrine maintained is not a new 
departure ; it is simply an advance in line with the 
universal tendency of Christian theology. It conserves 
and exalts all that Cliristian disciples connt dear. Tt 
differs from the common thought of Christian ortho- 
doxy only in that it claims freedom for man and 
equality in the dealings of God with men in higher 
degree than has been usual ; and in so doing it exalts 
the conception of God and of every Christian doc- 
trine, and brings into clearer light the self- consistency 
of Christianity and its harmony with sound pliilosophy. 

It is true all Christian teachers aflftrm the freedom 
of man — the highest freedom in their view possible 
to dependent beings. But no author, to the writer's 
knowledge, has claimed for man a freedom the use 
and results of whicli cannot be forecast from heredi- 
tary and environing conditions, either with certainty 
based on the sure working of law to which man is 
subject, or at least with probability in all degrees short 
of certainty. Just this high supremacy of freedom 
in man upon accountable issues which makes him su- 
perior to birth antecedents and environing conditions 
is claimed in this work — the God-given freedom which 
would have made Paul Paul and Csesar Csesar in 



THE QUESTION. 13 

moral standing witli God, so far as developed, if Paul 
had been given Csesars probation and Csesar Paul's, 
or if each had had his probation given him a millen- 
nium earlier or later and under providential conditions 
widely different. 

True, too many teach what they regard as equality 
in God's dealings with men — not, however, equality 
of advantages in the trial-life for gaining heaven, but 
what tliey accept for equality in the final awards of 
the judgment, by which they suppose lighter punish- 
ment will be meted to those who fail through hard 
conditions; as though equality in the divine admin- 
istration could begin after life's opportunity has ended 
and any punishment could be light which is eternal. 
But it is equality in probation itself, its daily, hourly, 
final opportunities for securing the award of divine 
approval, which is maintained in this volume. This 
alone is entitled to be called equality, and tliis, we 
need not hesitate to affirm, is fairly involved in the 
basis truths of the inspired word. And nothing less 
and nothing other than this can satisfy reasonable 
expectation. 

.The suggestion of future probation for the benighted 
myriads of Adam's race has forced itself upon many 
thoughtful minds as a relief hypothesis. But if this 
suggestion were accepted by Christians generally as a 
probability what relief would it bring with admitted 
inequality in this life ? If there be not equality in 
probation here, as far as we are called to the trust of 



14 THE DExMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

probation, upon what sure ground could we hope for 
equality or better conditions in a probation beyond 
death ? But if there be equality and fair conditions 
in probation here for all who are held to its responsi- 
bilities, then have we no occasion to seek relief in 
speculations as to the possible future plans of the infi- 
nite Father for any who are not called to the issues of 
probation in this life. 

CURRENT THOUGHT ON THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM. 

Strangely, there is no other question upon which 
among Christian teachers vagueness and indifference, 
or virtual surrender to an atheistic philosophy, so 
widely prevail as upon that of the freedom of man as 
a probationer for the life eternal. Christians, the 
natural defenders of freedom, are not awake to their 
responsibility. It is too early for us to retire from 
the field with assured victory, and we have no occa- 
sion to retreat from the conflict as a drawn battle. 

The impression of some that among Christians the 
doctrine of necessity is an outgrown error is a mis- 
take. A distinct avowal of necessity, it is true, we 
do not look for to-day in a Christian disciple. But 
under skillful disguises even in Christian ranks ne- 
cessity lacks not able defenders, while the cause of 
freedom often goes by default. Two reactions are in 
process, and from different stand-points. Yet neither 
is a reaction from necessity. In both necessity is the 
ultimatum. The explanation is that necessity has 



THE QUP:ST10N. 15 

assumed the name and stolen the garb of freedom, and 
manages the disguise so deftly as to deceive the very 
elect, and thus has grounded itself in the common faith. 
First we have a reaction from necessity to neces- 
sity — the halting, half-way necessity of predestinarian- 
ism to the more self-consistent, Uberal necessity of uni- 
versalism. It is true that condensed necessitarianism 
formulated in creeds, in the light of a better concep- 
tion of God, is fast disappearing from Churches of 
Calvinistic antecedents. This change, however, is 
not generally to a higher conception of the freedom 
and accountability of man, but ratlier to a larger hope 
that somehow, somewhere, sometime, the motives 
which lead men Godward will prevail generally, if 
not universally, and tliat, at the worst, if any fail of 
life eternal they will at last drop out of being. Eter- 
nal hope springs naturally from premises widely ac- 
cepted. Given as the highest conception of freedom 
in man simply the power to do as he cannot help 
being pleased to do, and the true conception of God 
as a Father of infinite resourcess who would have all 
men saved, and hope that all will finally be won to 
the path of life, is a reasonable conclusion. And this, 
it is well known, is the inspiring hope of increasing 
numbers of intelligent Christians ; in some avowedly, 
and in more who whisper it only in the ear of friends. 
On the contrary, there has come to many cultured 
minds on the Arminian side a reaction to the older 
Calvinistic tendencies of thought, occasioned partly by 



IG THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the lack of a self-consistent doctrine of freedom, and 
partly by a conservative recoil from this wide drift of 
thought in the direction of hope for all in tlie great 
fntnre. 

Of course, these reactions overleap denominational 
bounds. The truth seems to be that we have about 
as much of the necessitarian philosophy in the 
churches as ever, only it has in part changed cus- 
todians, and we liave the article now in a state of 
solution, its most dangerous form, subtly diffused 
through our processes of thought. 

The question of freedom has been several times 
settled, but it does not stay settled. Evidently the 
question cannot be given up. To give it up would 
be to surrender to necessity and lose our standing- 
ground. The great and good Jonathan Edwards 
thought he had settled it a century and a half ago 
that no freedom is possible other than the power 
each one has to act out his controlling inclination. 
With this conclusion it cannot be denied that the 
non-Christian writers of classic Greece and Home, 
and the anti-Christian philosophers of later times, 
as well as all the schools of Calvinistic thought, have 
been in substantial agreement. 

The leaders of thought on the side of a higher 
freedom^ it is well known, are agreed upon no com- 
mon defense on philosophic ground. Dr. D. D. 
Whedon, in a work of great ability, tried to settle 
this question in favor of freedom ; but his successor 



THE QUESTION. 17 

to the higliest literary position in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Dr. Daniel Curry, with like devo- 
tion to truth and with the right of great ability, 
challenged his arguments and judged his conclusions 
" 7iot jprovenr ^ 

It must be admitted, too, that necessity is to-day 
the underlying philosophy of a large part of current 
literature, secular and religious. And who shall say 
that from the single point of view of natural law this 
is not legitimate ? If Christianity has no helj) for us 
here — if it can neither give nor account for a higher 
than natural freedom — then are we helpless against the 
argument for necessity. 

A strong grasp of the stability of natural law 
within its proper realm is one of the later gains of 
both science and faith. At the same time, the exclu- 
sive reign of natural law has become a popular hobby. 
That ^N^vj man is what hereditary and environing 
influences make him is the creed of non-Christian 
scientists and thinkers of all schools. It is on this 
ground, too, that liberal Christians, including Uni- 
versalists and Unitarians, base their assurance that 
under an administration of omnipotent wisdom and 
love all men will ultimately, either in this life or in 
the life to come, be transformed into perfected sons 

* Dr. Carry's criticisms show the necessity of some revision of the 
statement and argument for freedom as given by Dr. TVhedon. 
But they do not invaUdate the substantial truthfulness of the con- 
clusions reached. 
2 



18 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of God. Admit the premise, and the conclnsion is 
tlie only reasonable one. Moreover, among pro- 
nounced Christian scientists the universal rei^rn of 
natural law so nearly monopolizes attention that pro- 
test against necessity is generally wanting or uncertain. 
.r-Iow freedom in man to make choice for himself can 
be reconciled with the reign of natural law is a ques- 
tion upon which the majority wdien pressed with 
objections are silent or admit that they see no light. 
On the other hand, Christian thinkers and teachers 
nobly endowed, who have departed widely from the 
theology of Edwards, have not ceased quietly to 
assume as axiomatic his basis principle, that tlie high- 
est possible freedom in man is his power to take the 
choice he did not make. It is confidently affirmed 
that any more freedom than this is impossible in 
itself, and that, if it were possible, it would but sub- 
stitute the reign of jargon in the place of law. The 
intuitive mind of Dr. Horace Bushnell saw clearly 
the fallacy of necessity, and in this he has had many 
followers. But neither Bushnell nor other thinkers of 
his class have given us a clear and adequate concep- 
tion of freedom. The foremost among them, etninent 
theological professors, are still ready to subscribe t'> 
doctrinal formulas avowedly Calvinistic which admit 
no reasonable interpretation in harmony w^ith any 
higher freedom than is supposed to be in the absolute 
sway of the divine will. 

It is notable also that the more prominent evangel- 



THE QUESTION. 19 

istic leaders of premilleiinarian views seem to ignore 
any otlier freedom in man than to act as he is acted 
upon, and to reii'ard Christianity as a system of spirit- 
ual dynamics for the rescue as by force of as niany 
souls as possible before the final catastrophe. 

Evidently it is the old theologies rather than the 
old pliilosophy which all the new departures in Chris- 
tian thought have left behind. But a theology, how- 
ever perfect, grounded on a necessitarian philosophy, 
liowever skillfully disguised, is meaningless. Word 
for word, idea for idea, thought for thought, the phi- 
losophy cancels from the theology every factor which 
denotes moral o:oyernment and accountability, and 
leaves even immortality an almost empty word. Sub- 
stantial historic support for freedom is found only 
when we turn from the trend of speculative philoso- 
phy on the basis of natural law to the broad, deep, 
steady gulf stream of consciousness of moral obliga- 
tion flowing in its strength down the ages. 

AGNOSTICISM UPON THE QUESTION. 

Agnosticism upon the question of freedom has of 
course ground for no conclusion. Indefiniteness as 
to the freedom of man as a moral agent carries wdtli 
it logically and inevitably indefiniteness as to his ac- 
countability here and hereafter. That is a very dan- 
gerous kind of agnosticism which would dismiss the 
question of freedom as one upon which no philosophy 
is supposed possible. If w^e have no philosophy on 



20 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

this question, then it is our misfortune to meet all 
other beliefs and unbeliefs at disadvantage. Predes- 
tinarianisni has a pliilosophy on the subject. So lias 
Herbert Spencer. So has avowed atheism. And in 
this all their philosophies agree — that every man is what 
the blood in his veins, and other conditions not in 
his control, make him. Moreover, it is fair to say 
that those who imagine they have no philosophy on 
the subject generally by implication unconsciously 
indorse the same destructive philosophy on the ground 
of which the distinction of right and wrong, and re- 
ligion itself, are consistently pronounced but con- 
venient fictions of an infantile development sure to be 
outgrown witli the attainment of intellectual man- 
hood. 

If we have no philosophy of freedom we can meet 
skepticism with no answer. Besides, we have no 
substantial ground on which to stand in appealing to 
the consciences of men. It is the contagion of this 
low level of thought (rather of thoughtlessness) on 
the great issue which makes possible the obtuseness 
that can turn flippantly away from it with a sneer at 
fate and free-will, as though it were but an idle 
enigma of the past. Faith, as a virtue, begins in a 
loyal recognition in our own consciousness of obliga- 
tion to a God above us, which includes consciousness 
of freedom to ohej. Unbelief, as a sin, begins when 
doubt as to the reality of such freedom and obliga- 
tion is accei)ted as the basis of action. 



THE QUESTION. 21 

GREATXES3 OF THE QUESTION. 

Instead of being a light question to be passed by 
as of little moment, it is but just to affirm tliat tlie 
question of the freedom of our probation is the 
weightiest question ^Yllich invites human thought. 
Nor must we give up the question as out of our range 
of vision. It is above all others the question which 
faces us and demands an answer. If God has endowed 
man or does inspire him with a real freedom to obey 
his voice in denial of self, then Christianity is true ; 
there is a God, and man is an accountable being 
working out a character praiseworthy or blameworthy, 
and an irreversible destiny for weal or woe. If, on 
the other hand, man has no higher freedom than that 
which is practically in the sway of surrounding in- 
fluences, then where are we ? Adrift on the tides of 
naturalism, materialism, fatalism, certain to find no 
rest short of the dead sea of atheism. Surelv we have 
reason with a single eye to truth to give consecrated 
thought to this pivotal question of our faith. 

Does this strange proclivity of even Christian 
thouo;ht mean blindness to the issues involved ? Is 
not the blindness itself due in part to the fact that we 
have been vainly groping for freedom where there is 
no freedom and no light on the question ? In the 
natural world, of which the natural man is the high- 
est type, necessity is the true philosophy. For any 
freedom above nature we must look higher than the 



22 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

laws of nature. The freedom wliicli constitutes man 
an elector and carries with it responsibility comes to 
him from above by a call of the divine Spirit. 

WHAT OUGHT TO BE TRUE. 

"All this ought to be true," was the terse response 
of an intelligent layman after reading several of the 
leading articles of this series, and with an outline of 
the plan of the work in his hand. Is what ouglit 
to be true always true ? Yes ; what the inspired word 
and enlightened reason justify us in affirming ought 
to be true is truth eternal. Human governments 
and rulers are all imperfect. 'No president or king can 
know all his subjects and adjust his reign equally to 
the needs of all. ISTo teacher can claim to be absolutely 
fair and impartial in his awards of merit to all his 
pupils. No earthly father is wise enough to do for 
all his children equally well and for all the best. 
The limitations of those to whom authority is in- 
trusted make short-comings unavoidable. 

But God is under no such limitations. He is a per- 
fect moral ruler, a perfect benefactor, and a perfect 
Father. He is omnipotent in wisdom and love and 
boundless in resources. He is no respecter of persons. 
His ways are equal. He measures his requirements 
by our ability, and adapts his plans for us to our con- 
ditions and needs. He is for us, not against us. Surely 
under his administration the freedom and equality 
which are reasonable are assured ; what ought to be is. 



II. 

THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY 
DEMOCRATIC. 



OUTLINE. 



Necessitarian Conceptions. 

The Democratic Conception Exalts the Sovereignty of God. 

Democracy of Christ and the Word. 



THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY DEMOCRATIC. 



There may be distinguished four conceptioTis of 
Christianity : the monarchical, in which the dominant 
idea of God is that of a great King determining by 
his sovereign decree all the actions and even the 
characters and destinies of men ; the mechanical, 
which places man completely under the dominion of 
natural law, and logically makes him an automaton ; 
the dynamic, the notion of many Christians more 
zealous than wise, which regards Christianity as a 
system of appliances for the rescue as by force of 
souls, they imagine would, but for their interven- 
tion, be left to perish; and the democratic, which 
makes the individual man the objective imit of 
the Christian system and brings into the foreground 
the freedom and responsibilities of probation, and, to 
be consistent with itself, must claim for all, while the 
trial-life continues, essential equality in probational 
opportunity. Upon the deeper questions involved, 
of course, the notions of the majority are mixed 
and vague. But it would be easy to give repre- 
sentative names of Christian leaders whose dominant 
conceptions of Christianity (unless we must except 
the democratic as yet but inceptive) are liere fairly 
stated. 



26 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

NECESSITARIAN CONCEPTIONS. 

But in fact analysis speedily reduces the first three 
conceptions to one — that of necessity. Natural law 
can be nothing other than the iinifortn method by 
which God works. And if man is capable of no other 
activity than that which is determined by constitutional 
tendencies or by agencies acting upon him or within 
him, then has lie no real freedom; he is what he is 
by the working of conditious not in his control. To 
a creature of necessity, whether it be a decree of 
heaven, or natural law, or accident, or fate that has 
made him what he is, is of no account. 

Christian orthodoxy, for the greater part, has 
dropped predestinarianism as a relic of pagan philos- 
ophy and a burden npon faith ; though it has yet but 
feebly grasped the conception of unvarying equality 
in the dealings of God with men. On the contrary, 
with strange inconsistency those who, instead of 
dropping predestinarianism, have surrendered their 
Christianity, have quite generally retained the old 
burden under another name. Exchange of the 
necessity conceived to have universal sway by the 
decree of an infinite sovereign for the necessity still 
imagined to hold us fast by the unsparing rule of 
natural law is, to say the least, no gain. By no means 
does the hypothesis of evolution exclude God and 
miracle and freedom, any more than the development 
and growtli of a tree exclude planting and culture. 



TRUE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 27 

But the eyolution that knows no law but necessity, 
call it theistic or atheistic, is in effect the same. The- 
istic necessity and atheistic necessity, philosophically 
considered, are identical. The notion of theistic 
necessity is self-contradictory. Necessity logically 
excludes God as well as degrades man. 

THE DEMOCRATIC CONCEPTION EXALTS THE SOVER- 
EIGNTY OF GOD 

in like ratio as it exahs human responsibility. Su- 
preme control over that which is without real freedom 
is purely mechanical. Divine sovereignty is the 
supremacy of God as a moral governor over subjects 
who within the area of their accountability are abso- 
lutely free. The purpose of God's sovereignty is the 
gift to all of the perfect freedom which is the just basis 
of accountability and an administration over all di- 
vinely fair and equal — in the deepest sense democratic. 
A perfect democracy must be a state in which all 
the people find full and equal opportunity for their 
own development and for the achievement of com- 
plete success in life. Very far short of this ideal, it 
need not be said, come all human attempts at demo- 
cratic administration. There is but one perfect de- 
mocracy, and even that man is just beginning to 
recognize as such — the rule of Christ under which we 
have our trial-life. The democracy of Christianity is 
the absolute freedom, the perfect fairness, and the 
essential equality in the conditions of our probation. 



28 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

In the democracy of God's kingdom of course the 
people do not make the fonndation-laws. Moral law 
is not made ; it is eternal. But all who are held ac- 
countable do, in perfect freedom, elect between God 
and self ; and all who are true to their convictions do, 
in effect, enact the will of God as the rule of their 
lives. The kingdom of God which Christ came to 
set up in the hearts of men is democratic in that, 
within the realm of responsibility, it is one of perfect 
freedom to all ; and it assures to all equality of oppor- 
tunity for deserving and gaining the approval of God 
and achieving success in the probation of life. 

DEMOCRACY OF CHRIST AND THE WORD. 

The inspired volume is the Magna Charta of free- 
dom to the children of God, and we shall find it a 
cyclopedia of pertinent illustrations from which we 
may draw as we have occasion. But it is in order 
thus early to make brief reference to the Founder and 
the text-book of Christianity — the Word made flesli 
and the same word written. In both cases we have a 
revelation of the divine through the human. In the 
revealing plan there is unity. The divine in the book 
is Christ in this human form. Not just the absolute 
perfection for the written w^ord of God as we have it 
can be claimed as for the Word that was God. Room 
for reverent criticism there is in the study of the text 
sanctioned by Christian scholarship. But the incar- 
nate Word was absolutely infallible. Christ is, there- 



TRUE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 29 

fore, properly the key to the book and the test of its 
true interpretation. He is the disciple's higher law 
in all legitimate biblical criticism. In both incarna- 
tions the purpose of his mission is to set at liberty the 
bound who welcome him. " As many as received him, 
to them gave he power to become the sons of God." 
''If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 

But the democracy of the word appears even in 
that which, from a surface view, may seem short- 
comings. The Bible is not such a book as its critics 
judge it ought to be to be trustworthy. The sacred 
annals are not all supported by authority which it is 
impossible to challenge, nor do they answer every 
question wdiicli they suggest, nor are they always so 
explicit in their teachings as not to admit honest dif- 
ferences in interpretation. But it is an assumption 
without warrant in reason that a revelation which 
should settle every possible question and compel uni- 
versal assent would better meet the needs of intelli- 
gent moral agents in the school of probation. 

Laws and penalties might be so massed as to over- 
whelm and crush freedom as effectually as the shields 
of the Sabines crushed the maiden Tarpeia. It is a 
frequent mistake in human institutions to leave too 
little room for freedom, l^ot uncommon is this error 
in the work of education as well as in legislation. 
Our scliools turn out more machine men than they 
educate free men. That is the best government which 
restricts authority witliin wise limits. He is the best 



30 THE DExMOCHACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

educator who most inspires liis pupils to think for 
themselves. He is the true teacher of rehgion wlio 
takes his hearers to tlie sources of truth and awakens 
more tliought than he imparts. In these particulars 
the word of God commends itself as the right book 
for us. The credentials of Christianity, while to can- 
did disciples perfectly satisfactory, are not such as to 
force the assent of unwillino^ minds. 

The Bible is infallible in wdiat it teaches, but it 
does not undertake to teach us every thing nor to 
force upon us any thing. It is not an elaborate sys- 
tem of ruts to which thought is restricted by irresistible 
law. It is just the book to inspire wdiolesome mental 
activity and freedom upon the great themes of relig- 
ion. If our Bible claimed to be so direct and full and 
unmist doable in its instructions as to be the end of 
inquiry upon every question of interest to us, then 
would it indeed be thoroughly monarchical in its 
attitude toward us, facing us in every line with author- 
ity, and leaving little room for the noble candor in 
which Butler has justly reminded us consists in large 
part the trust of our probation. A Bible constructed 
on that principle might be a perfect thing in its way, 
and fit well an order of purely machine minds ; but to 
the soul-freedom of the sons of God it w^ould be 
fatally repressive. 

My Bible is a better book for me than would be a 
perfect and full record of the mind of God on every 
possible question which may arise written out by an 



TRUE COXCEPTIOX OF CHRISTIANITY. 31 

amanuensis as dictated to him word for word by tlie 
infinite Spirit. I do not know wliat may be the linal 
decision of Christian scholars as to certain Scripture 
readings, or the date and authorsliip of particular 
books. I care only that they do their work witli a 
single eye to truth as faithful disciples of the Master. 

But, independently of all such questions, I have sat- 
isfactory evidence, and that is better than overpower- 
ing evidence, tliat, in the plan of tlie heavenly Father 
in my life, tlie Bible, as it is, is put into my hands to 
help me to the conception of the kind of man I ought 
to be to make life a success, and to give me also 
needed instruction as to how I may become such a 
man. A Bible human as well as divine is what we 
want — a Bible that appeals to our candor, awakens 
inquiry, inspires thought, and respects our ability to 
some extent to think and judge and choose for our- 
selves. It is such a Bible God has given us. The 
word of God comes to us in human language w^ith its 
imperfections. It comes through the working of 
human faculties with their limitations. It is given 
into the care of short-sighted human custodians. Good 
for us tliat is so. Not the less but much more is it 
the word of God to us. The book has all the inspi- 
ration its purpose required — ^more, doubtless, in some 
parts than in others. It is better suited to our needs 
than would be a revelation which should do all our 
thinking for us. 

The Word of God revealed in the Man and the 



32 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

BOOK and attended by the Light of God in us has done 
the best tliat can be done to help lis to a true concep- 
tion of God and man and to the achievement of 
worthy manhood. Tiie book is a treasury of facts 
and principles and rules of conduct which deeply con- 
cern us. It has not undertaken to answer all our 
questions. But the freedom and responsibility and 
equality before God of all men, and universal love 
uniting all upright souls in one brotherhood under 
one divine fatherhood, are the democratic principles 
which surely as never before his day come to the 
front in the word of the great Revealer. Crowning 
all we find in him perfect illustration of democracy in 
character and highest inspiration to the democratic 
spirit. 



III. 

LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM UNDER MTURAL 
LAW— LIBERTY. 



O UTLI NE 



Freedom in Inanimate Nature. 

Brute Freedom — Non-Alternative. 

Freedom of Man Non-Alternative upon Non-Ethical Issues. 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM UNDER NATURAL LAW- 
LIBERTY. 



There are points where even belligerents at times 
shake hands in friendly agreement. So in the para- 
doxes of language opposite terms sometimes meet in 
their applications. It is thus that our noble word 
'' freedom " is often applied where the conditions of 
choice as an act of the will are not present and, per- 
haps, the less exalted word ''liberty" were more ap- 
propriate. Freedom in this inferior sense actually 
exists nnder law of necessity. There is no freedom 
bnt under limitations of law. The freedom of moral 
agency is freedom with an alternative. But there are 
lower forms of freedom without an alternative — sim- 
ple liberty of unimpeded movement or activity to one 
open way in the unvarying order of natural law. 
Such are the forms of freedom, if so the word mav be 
applied, which first ask our attention, that the higher 
freedom of probation — the responsible power of self- 
control — be not confounded with them. 

A word of explanation as to the use of terms may 
be due here. Thought has the right of way in lan- 
guage, and is sure in good time to assert its right. 
Not unfrequently just distinctions in thought in a de- 
gree compel recognition even before they find clear 



36 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

statement. It is thus that the common language of the 
people is often the pioneer of philosophy. The reason 
seems to be that it is intuitive ratlier than loerical 
minds — faith and love rather than pure intellect — that 
catch the earliest glimpses of truth and first give it 
voice. 

In distinguishing between freedom and liberty all 
that is claimed is that, in thoughtful usage, the Anglo- 
Saxon word has come to be preferred as of higher 
import than the Latin derivative. To set a bondman at 
liberty plainly means less than to make him a freeman. 
But at most the question concerns only the proper 
use of w^ords. There is no logical issue involved. 

If it be thought unnatural to apply either freedom 
or liberty to that which is necessitated it must yet be 
admitted that such application has the sanction of wide 
usage. All necessitarians (and they are in large ma- 
jority) do apply these words to what they regard as 
but unrestricted activitv in the fixed order of natural 
law, and they afiirm that no higher freedom than this 
is possible. Obviously, within the realm of natural 
law necessity is as absolute over animate as inanimate 
being. 

FREEDOM IN INANIMATE NATURE. 

By freedom in inanimate nature we mean simply 
exemption from hinderances to liberty of movement or 
change of any substance caused either by a power 
without itself or by the natural working of its own 
laws The ball is at liberty to move as it is thrown, 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 37 

the loosed apple to fall to tlie ground, water to flow 
in its cliannel, the planets to revolve in their orl)itS5 
the seed to germinate in the soil, the vine to climb 
ni^on its trelhs, the mvriad forms of veo;etable life 

i J tj CD 

nnder their appointed conditions to grow as they were 
made to grow — all in obedience to natural law which 
they have no power to disobey. Thus through all 
the realms of inanimate nature is freedom ever 
bounded by necessity. Even this lowest form <>f 
freedom is the life and charm of the material world, 
makino^it the friend and servant of intellio;ent beino;s. 
Yea, more. Is it not just in the line of freedom in nat- 
ure that most clearly to the eye of faith God is seen ? 
Why does the apple grow, and wdiy, when loosed 
from the tree, does it move at all, if Gud is not there? 

BRUTE FREEDOM — XOX-ALTERXATIV^E. 

Above the plant and the tree, the animal tribes 
liave in different degrees the liberty of spontaneous 
movement. AVe may not say they have the freedom 
of yoluntary action. They have not personality and 
power to choose fcv themselves. They are instru- 
ments, not agents. Yet are they truly actors in seek- 
ing their own ])leasure. They are at liberty, each in 
his own little world, to do as he is inclin^^d to do. 
They have this liberty in the precence of natural 
incentives by constitutional endowment, aiid of all 
merely natural endowments this is the most wonderful 
and admirable. 



38 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Even wlien the animal tribes act bj coercion it is 
tliey themselves that act under the coercion. The 
horse moves by a higher Law than the steam-engine. 
He does not wait to be borne forward as he bears his 
rider, nor to be drawn as he draws the chaise ; but at 
his master's word he involuntarily starts for himself 
because he finds himself so inclined, and, if he is too 
slow, without intervening volition he quickens his 
pace rather than bear the spur. The gentle touch of 
the spur is nothing to the horse as a mere physical 
force. It would not move him a liair's breadth. Nor 
is the spur a motive addressed to the reason of the 
horse. It is but a natural incentive acting dynamic- 
ally upon the sensitive organism of the horse as a 
creature of natural law. 

It scarcelv needs formal statement that brute free- 
dom is limited to the outgoing, without volitional aid, 
of natural appetite and desire into action. The eagle 
does not will his wung into service. His wing obeys 
his inclination. The brute acts at all times as he is 
made to act, either by promptings within or by agen- 
cies wuthout wdiicli alike he has no power to resist. 
He has no occasion for choice as an act of the mind. 
He is under natural, not moral, law. His choice is 
never of his own makino;. Power of self-control 
he has none. IN^ature — rather, God in nature — has 
chosen for him. He simply acts out nature. His 
choice is identical with his inclination. Volitions in 
the proper sense of the word he has not. You may 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 39 

subject his movements to your service by controlling 
tlie conditions on which his inclinations depend, or by 
opposing one inclination to another ; but, made and 
environed, as he is, it is impossible that nature should 
prompt or that he should in any case act otherwise. 
Constitutional law within him and providence above 
him settle for him every question and map out his path 
from life's beginning to its end. He is a machine, 
set in motion and worked by forces not in his control. 
He is just what all necessitarians, theistic and atheistic, 
make man to be. 

FREEDOM OF MAK NON- ALTERNATIVE UPON NON-ETHICAL 

ISSUES. 

Man is not less an animal than the inferior tribes, 
and when he acts on the same plane with them, as he 
does upon all questions in which conscience is not 
concerned, obviously he acts under the same law. 
Doing as one pleases no more proves the power of 
alternative choice in the man than in the ox. It is 
freedom in the one in the same sense as in the other. 
Thronghout the world of non-ethical activity fi-eedoni 
in man, equally as in the lower animals, is simply lib- 
erty to do as the incentive wdiicli most strongly appeals 
to him prompts. 

It should not be overlooked in considering this 
statement that more freedom than this, even in the 
etliical sphere, has but slender historical support. It 
is advanced gronnd for freedom w^hich is here taken. 



40 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

In restricting alternative freedom to accountable 
issues we simply assent to tlie general verdict with 
this large reservation in favor of freedom. The lead- 
ing minds of all time, Christian and non-Christian, 
w^ith few exceptions, have denied or ignored any 
higher freedom than the liberty each one has to do as 
he is inclined to do. Even the claim of libertarians to 
a wider freedom is often more seeming than real. 
The freedom claimed is but nominal — freedom the 
decisions of which, as elsewhere named, may with 
probability in all degrees short of certainty be rea- 
soned about and concluded upon from conditions upon 
which they are seen to depend — freedom which 
amounts to the liberty of the eagle, if he w^anted to, to 
adopt the habits of a worm. A higher freedom than 
that surely must be the freedom of a fair probation, 
and truth upon our question requires us to distinguish 
the higher freedom from the lower. 

The claim to irresponsible alternative freedom an- 
swers itself. Alternative freedom is in the nature of 
the case accountable freedom. The power to choose 
carries with it obligation to choose in the exercise of our 
best judgment. Surely it will not be cLaimed that all 
the actions of men^ — for example, every mo^tion of the 
fino;ers and of the vocal and visual or2:ans in a musical 
entertainment — index choices between the rio^ht and 
the wrong. In the presence of natural inclination 
alone the conditions of choice as a determination of 
the will do not exist. In the absence of an ethical 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 41 

motive no real alternative is offered, and one's choice 
is simply his preference. 

Intellectual superiority alone does not change the 
order of freedom, but simply opens more widely to 
Its possessor the world of natural hiw in which he 
finds his pleasure. To the desire for gain between a 
dollar and an eagle there is no question. Between 
an eagle and a ten-dollar note bearing interest lies a 
possible question for the decision of the judgment. 
Between an eagle in the j)^ii'se and an ornament of 
equal value for one's person, or the gratification it 
might bring to appetite, there is room simply for the 
question which is the ruling passion. It is essentially 
the same when w^e 0:0 a little hio^her, and the conflict 
is between tempting thrones of power and inviting 
treasures of intellectual wealth. In these and all 
kindred cases inclination rules and bv natural law is 
predetermined upon its object, and halts only to find 
how it may be most fully gratified. 

The liberty of man within certain limits is obvious; 
but what is that to the question of alternative freedom ? 
Surely liberty to an open way does not imply freedom 
to a way that is not open. Liberty to take my choice 
between an orana^e and a srourd is not freedom to make 
the gourd my clioice. Liberty to do one's pleasure 
does not prove freedom to do that which is not one's 
pleasure, any more than the liberty of the apple loosed 
fi'om the tree to fall to the earth proves its freedom 
to rise to the sun. The apple changes its direction as 



42 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tlie earth clianges its position in tlie course of its revo- 
lutions. It would move toward the sun if the sun 
should come near enough to become the more strongly 
attractive body. So the man whose pleasure for the 
instant is the dollar you hold up for him to the right 
when you change it to the left has liberty to turn for 
it in that direction. Offer him in the other hand in- 
stead any thing at your disposal — a crown, a diploma, 
a commission, a tempting cup, a laurel wreath — 
and he is still at liberty to take just which he may 
find to be his preference. Challenge him to take 
from several objects before him that for which he 
cares the least or something repulsive to him, and he 
may be at liberty to take that, if he is weak enough 
to find his strongest incentive in an ambition to show 
you his power to accept your challenge. Power to 
do a foolish thing is the weakness of a fool. In all 
possible conditions in which inclination alone is con- 
cerned a man's freedom is simply liberty to act out 
his inclination, and changes its object only as the con- 
ditions change on which inclination depends. 

The history of mankind is in large part one con- 
tinued illustration of activity under constitutional or 
natural law, and therefore non-alternative and subject 
to control. It is on this assured ground that every- 
where the parent is expected to control his children, 
the teacher his pupils, the employer his laborers, the 
master his assistants, the ruler his subjects, the cap- 
tain his army, the leader his followers. In infancy and 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 43 

early cliildliood liberty thus subject to control is tlie 
only freedom. It is the only possible freedom in non- 
ethical activity throughout life. It is not true, as some 
claim, that every man has his price. There are sons 
of God among men who are without price. But it is 
true that every sensible man who has service to ren- 
der for a consideration, wliere no ethical motive inter- 
venes, gives it for that which to him seems most val- 
uable. A reasonable man is not capable of doing 
otherwise. On this ground the man witli capital 
knows he can command labor. In the higlier depart- 
ments of service the same law holds. The people of a 
free commonwealth know that they can with rare ex- 
ceptions easily accounted for command the services of 
the men of their choice for tlieir offices of trust and 
honor. A Christian pastor, higher considerations in 
his judgment being equal and therefore out of the 
account, could not help preferring a salary of $4,000 
a year to one of $400. 

So the world over the currents of human action are 
largely subject to the attractive power of incentives 
which address the earthward side of human nature. 
Tlie child accepts the toy, the epicure his sweet mor- 
sel, the miser his gold, the soldier his commission, the 
bride the hand of her husband, the prince his crown, 
because this is their pleasure. Even the plodding 
slave, as he goes to his task, does as he pleases rather 
than bear the cruel lash. The prisoner goes to his 
cell, or ascends the gallows, because to go himself 



44 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRiSTlxlXlTY. 

rather than be carried by an officer is his unavoidable 
preference. 

From the beginning, where inclination alone is con- 
cerned, it has been the governing principle. Within 
narrow limits all men are free to do as they are 
inclined. In the absence of moral considerations this 
is the extent of their freedom. To act against incli- 
nation with no reason for so doing would be to act 
without motive or incentive, which is as impossible as 
to breathe witliout air. 

The puzzle of Bnridan''s donkey at equal distances 
between like bundles of ha}^, either choosing between 
them without an incentive or starving to death from 
lack of an incentive to choice, as Leibnitz has said, " is 
a purely hypothetical case, and could not occur in real 
experience." No denizen of earth, biped, multiped, 
reptile, or iish, can be placed in that position. If the 
ease were possible and we could give no account of 
the donkey's movements toward one of the bundles, 
that would only prove the case to be one which we do 
not understand, and from which we cannot reason. Of 
course, we can infer nothing from tliat of which we 
know nothing. But the sophism is too thin to serve as 
a bhnd. If the donkey saw no difference between the 
two bundles he could of course have no clioice between 
them, and he would prove himself a fool to attempt 
to choose. Doubtless you could place the docile 
beast near enough to the mathematical center of a 
line joining the two bundles ; but you could not make 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 45 

him look at botli at tlie same time, and tlie one under 
liis eve would be practically much the nearer, and 
sure to win without comparison. If he cared to stop 
to compare the two bundles before obejhig the call 
of appetite, evidently as a sensible donkey he would 
take the one upon which his eye should happen to 
rest at the instant he discovered them to be alike. 
He could have no occasion for turning again to 
the other. The donkey's choice in the case is not 
between the two equals, it is simply his unavoidable 
desire for the fodder as soon as he can get it. Doubt- 
less with the way clear before him he would take his 
choice in perfect liberty. That, however, would not 
prove him free to make a pile of shavings twice as 
far away his choice. But it does show that the sum 
of all attempts to prove freedom in man by his liberty 
to take one of two equals amounts only to tliis — 
that man is the possessor of liberty on a level with a 
donkey. We shall have to look higher than the ani- 
mal in man for freedom to elect for himself. 

With the extension of the advantages of Christian 
culture is the sway of conscience widened. But evi- 
dently it is not in the plan of the heavenly Father that 
his children should act exclusively nor chiefly from 
the promptings of conscience. Conscience, in God's 
order as a wise ruler, sits calmly on her throne, leav- 
ing to the lesser agencies of nature the largest liberty 
to play their part and do their best in securing well- 
ordered lives and good neighborhood, and holding 



46 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIAXITY. 

her voices in reserve for the assertion of her suprem- 
acy only when demanded. The appetites, desires, 
affections, aiid needs wliich we have by natural en- 
dowment bear, and were intended to bear, a large 
part in the organization of society and tlie increase and 
development of the race. And doubtless with all our 
faults he is better pleased with the result than he 
could be with conscience as the only incentive to 
activity, if, indeed, under that condition society could 
have been held together and the race perpetuated at 
all. Conscience is always weak in early life, and it is 
not the wisdom of the divine Father to trust it alone. 
The young man who goes from country life to tlie city 
with nothing but his conscience to fortify him against 
temptation is likely to find himself but a babe among 
wolves. To be strong against the wiles of sin his con- 
science has need to be seconded and supported not only 
by the motives of religion, but by self-interest and self- 
respect, and by the natural affections called into exer- 
cise by a manly father and a womanly mother and other 
providential helps. But even if universal loyality 
to conscience were assured, its exclusive sway would 
be the reign of perpetual winter. What a world that 
would be in which the mother should be obliged to 
draw upon her conscience in all her attentions to her 
babe ! Who is not ready to answer. Better our world 
as it is than a world wliere stern duty should face us 
at every turn, leaving no room for sympathy, gener- 
osity, self-respect, play, love ? It is by divine appoint- 



LOWER FORMS OF FREEDOM— LIBERTY. 47 

ment that nature within the sanction of reason is 
made our friend and guide. It is tlie Father's will 
tliat we act out nature — do as we please — when there 
is no reason why we should not. 

If we ask of what incentives are the great intellect- 
ual and material achievements of mankind — monu- 
ments, cities, highways, art-galleries, schools, libraries 
— the actual product, doubtless the answer must be, 
For the greater part those which address the natural 
desires of man rather than his conscience. Wg must 
go higher tlian nature, even as unfolded in the lofty 
realms of science or as adjusted to harmony with 
spiritual excellence in the world of the beautiful, be- 
fore we come to elective freedom. Freedom with an 
alternative is the freedom by which the soul rises 
above nature into the realm of the moral and spiritual, 
and makes nature her servant. Freedom to act out 
natural inclination, in man alike with the inferior 
animals, is but liberty to one open way. 

Our conclusion that elective freedom is restricted 
to moral issues accords with the testimony of con- 
sciousness, and is implied in tlie dependence of moral 
agency upon the Spirit and providence of God, as 
will be shown in other articles. 

The negative reached in this article, that without 
the ethical sphere there is no alternative freedom, 
simply clears the way for an intelligent view of the 
freedom of moral agency which claims our chief at- 
tention. To clear a forest and prepare the ground 



48 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

is a greater task than the cultivation of the soil when 
thus made ready. Our field of inquiry is one singu- 
larly encumbered. Those who have thouglit to clear 
it of long-standing error have oftener rather pruned 
and fostered error under new disguises. The advo- 
cates of freedom as well as of necessity have largely 
confounded the higher and the lower forms of free- 
dom, and botli, though in opposite ways, at the ex- 
pense of freedom. More lives are destroyed by over- 
feeding than by starvation. So lias the argument for 
the freedom of moral ao-encv oftener been burdened 
to its death by the absurd claims of its friends than 
it has suffered from the logic of fatalism. The de- 
fenders of freedom against necessity have gained 
nothing by attempting to found an argument on the 
distinction between an act and a desire or a thought, 
but have rather weiglited their cause with irrelevan- 
cies. Thinking, no less than walking, is action, and 
in either case it may or may not be the will that gov- 
erns. In numberless cases it is feeling without voli- 
tion which prompts alike to the bodily and the mental 
movement. To place a man's power of choice as a 
moral agent on a par with the fancied liberty of a hun- 
gry animal, brute or human, to turn from his favor- 
ite food if he wanted to, in the absence of any motive 
or incentive against taking it, is logically to put the 
man under the law of necessity. I^o argument for 
freedom with an alternative can stand save for a free- 
dom absolute restricted to questions of conscience. 



IV. 

HIGHER FREEDOM WITH POWER OF CHOICE UNDER 
MORAL LAW-PROBATION. 



OUTLINE. 



Grounds of Alternative Freedom upon Responsible Issues. 

1. It is credible as a gift of the Spirit of God to man. 

2. A responsible issue opens the way to elective freedom. 

3. That duty carries with it the power of choice is an obvious, neces- 

sary truth. 

4. The Creator has given to man the needed constitutional outfit for 

this higher freedom. 

5. Freedom of choice between responsible issues is the clearest dic- 

tate of consciousness. 

6. It is implied in the universal language of mankind. 

'7. This is the great doctrine with regard to man of the inspired 

word. 
8. This is just the freedom and all the freedom with power of cQoice 

for which we have occasion. 

Freedom of Moral Agency Absolute. 

1. This is a just expectation. 

2. It is assured by its dependence on the divine Spirit. 

3. This is the only tenable ground of moral agency. 

4. It is not out of harmony with known facts in human experience. 

5. It removes the objection to the doctrine of probation of condi- 

tions hard and unequal. 

Moral Agency the Freedom of Probation. 



HIGHER FREEDOM WITH POWER OF CHOICE UNDER 
MORAL LAW-PROBATION. 



The conclusion reached in the preceding article was 
that the only freedom known in the sphere of non- 
ethical activity is non-alternative — liberty under nat- 
ural law to take the choice lie does not make, which 
man shares with the inferior animals. The purpose 
of the present article is to show that the freedom of 
moral ao;ency, or freedom under moral law, is alter- 
native, that it is absolute, and that it is limited to 
probation. But the freedom of moral agency is not 
freedom to an indefinite number of alternatives. It 
is freedom to just the two alternatives of duty and 
self — always some particular duty against some par- 
ticular inchnation of self. 

Man differs radically from the inferior animals 
thus : In them inclination is installed as master duly 
restrained by natural checks ; in man such natural 
checks are less complete and insuflicient, and con- 
science, or consciousness of a higher power to v;hich 
we owe allegiance, is enthroned above inclination, re- 
quiring the man himself to hold upon every appetite 
and passion the needed rein. They are free only to 
act as they are inclined ; man is, by the inbreathing 
of the divine Spirit, made free to control inclination 



52 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in loyalty to duty. They have before them no other 
object than the gratilication of appetite ; he has be- 
fore him a standard of character requiring heroic self- 
denial, upon which is conditioned the reward of life 
eternal. They are irresponsible ; he is responsible. 
They are what they are made to be; he is in part — 
that is, in his responsible character — what he makes 
himself. Man is placed under reasonable prohibi- 
tion. He may not indulge appetite to the violation 
of the laws of his own being, nor so as to conflict 
with the rights and well-being of others, nor in any 
pleasure which God has forbidden. Upon all ques- 
tions in w^liich conscience is concerned man may thus 
find in it an alternative to inclination, and by obe- 
dience to its voice resist the prohibited indulgence 
and rise, if he will, to the loyal exercise of this nobler 
freedom. 

How widely and constantly mankind are in the ex- 
ercise of accountable freedom is a question upon which 
we do well to speak with caution. Of course, there 
is to all a period of ii-responsible infancy, and that 
period is not determined by calendar limit nor by any 
law of natural evolution. Doubtless the general ver- 
dict of sinners against their fellow-sinners less favored 
than themselves by birth and environing influences is 
too hard. We are prone to blame where the divine 
Man pities and apologizes — '' Father forgive them, 
for they know not what they do." How" far the sin- 
ner is self-made, and, therefore, guilty, we are incom- 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATION. 53 

petent to judge. It is not becoming in us to affirm 
beyond this — that the heavenly Father holds men ac- 
countable only for the freedom to which he calls 
them, and tliat he so adjusts his requirements to the 
measure of ability as to give to all equal and the best 
possible opportunity to secure his favor. 

AYhen the question of freedom with an alternative 
is thus disentangled from irrelevant connections, and 
is seen to be simply the question of the power of 
choice between duty and inclination, it ceases to be a 
question. The issue is not primarily a metaphysical 
or psychological one, and it does not depend on ab- 
struse, hair-splitting processes of reasoning possible 
only to logical experts. The grounds of freedom to 
choose where moral obligation is involved are open 
and sure, and the simpler their statement the better. 
Only a brief summary is attempted here. 

GEOUXDS OF ALTERNATIVE FREEDOM UPON RESPONSIBLE 

ISSUES. 

1. Let it be noted first, as a truth to be kept in 
mind and elsewhere to receive due attention, that this 
wonderful power by which man is able to choose for 
himself is not claimed as an endowment or outgrowth 
of the natural man. It comes to man from above, 
and it is this which makes it credible. It is the gift 
to every man, according to his measure, of the Spirit 
of God — ^^'the Light which lighteth every man com- 
ing into the world." The notion of freedom loosely 



54 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lield by some, as a mere natural endowment by whicli 
man is supposed to be able within his little world to 
set up for himself as an independent actor, involves 
the same absurdity as all self-acting perpetual-motion 
projects. Man is free to say " No " to appetite and 
'^ Yes " to duty because God calls him to this freedom. 
Man's capacity for God and endowment of the Spirit 
both explain the mystery of his pov/er to choose and 
restrict it to questions of conscience toward God. 

2. A responsible issue opens the way to elective 
freedom. It does not endow the mind w^itli a new 
faculty, but it gives it opportunity. Air does not 
confer upon a man respiratory organs, but it puts 
such organs to their proper use. So does the appeal 
of moral obligation furnish the indispensable occasion 
for the use of the will-power in man — the power of 
self-control. It supplies an alternative in kind— con- 
viction of duty against some natural appetite or de- 
sire which otherwise nmst be the mind's choice — and 
so it makes possible the exercise of the will in choos- 
ing. With only natural desire or appetite present the 
conditions of choice as an act of the will do not exist. 
With my choice between a pippin and a crab the will 
has nothing to do. The choice is not of my own 
making. When both are offered I am free, just as 
the bird is free under like conditions, to one open 
way — free to take my constitutional choice ; and, if 
no other consideration intervene, that is the limit of 
my freedom. It is not, strictly speaking, myself that 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATIOX. 55 

is free in the case. The freedom is nothing more than 
tlie liberty of some inclination of my being to project 
itself in some form of activity ; it may be bodily, it 
may be in thonght only. It is .freedom in the lead 
of natural law. 

But when duty colHdes with the inclination of the 
natural man freedom, or the w411-power, comes into 
unavoidable exercise in making one's choice, or choos- 
ing. It is thus that duty opens to freedom the path- 
way to the higher life. 

3. That duty carries with it the power of choice — 
freedom equally to the right and the w^rong — is an 
obvious, necessary truth. It is not in Omnipotence 
to place a man under obligation to do that which he 
has not power to do. To say a man ought to do a 
thing is to say he can do it. Moral obligation depends 
on the power of choice, as science depends upon 
knowledge, philosophy upon truth as established by 
facts, every superstructure upon its base. 

4. The Creator has given to man the needed consti- 
tutional outfit for this higlier freedom. As an intelli- 
gent man in examining a watch readily sees that it is 
designed to be a time-keeper, so in looking into 
the mind of man we discern all the requisite capac- 
ities for the trust of moral freedom. \Ye find there 
(1) tlie power to discern between the right and the 
wrong; (2) susceptibility to motives and incentives 
both to the riolit and the wrong — appetites and de- 
sires exposing him to temptation to sinful indulgence, ' 



56 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and reason and conscience that forbid and command 
his allegiance to a liigher law ; and (3) the will-power 
to choose for himself between opposing alternatives. 
The brute has appetite without the higher reason and 
conscience and will-power of man. Stubborn, dogged, 
mulish, willful, as we use the word, he may be constitu- 
tionally ; but of will, as the power of self-control, he is 
destitute. He is completely in the control of appe- 
tite. Pie is like the plow of the fathers that could 
turn the furrow but one way. Modern invention has 
constructed a plow with a simple contrivance by 
which the husbandman turns his furrow at pleasure 
to the right or the left. In like manner the Creator 
has so constituted man and so endows him with his 
Spirit that, during his probation, he can turn either 
God ward or earthward, and that he can, at will, 
adjust all his faculties to the chosen path. 

This does not take man out from the reign of law, 
as would the notion of some that he is free to an in- 
definite number of alternatives. The free agent is not 
an independent actor in a chance world. He is at 
every step the subject of law within and above him. 
Wlien he makes natural appetite or desire his choice 
against his conviction of duty he simply elects the 
lower nature as his master, and comes or remains 
under the dominion of natural law. When he heeds 
the voice within him calling him to duty in resistance 
to inclination he makes the will of God his choice, 
w^hether or not so defined in his own mind. He does 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATION. 57 

not make law, bat lie obeys law, and in just the lines 
drawn for him. 

5. Freedom of choice within the limit of accounta- 
bility is the clearest testimony of consciousness, which 
is tlie same as to say all men by experience know them- 
selves to be free to choose between what they recognize 
as the right and the wrong. Consciousness of obliga- 
tion includes consciousness of power or freedom, as 
tlie wliole includes the part. Consciousness has not 
settled every question as to our mental activity, but 
its verdict is decisive that elective freedom is com- 
mensurate with obligation. We are perfectly con- 
scious of freedom to do wliat we are conscious we 
ought to do. 

6. Man's freedom to choose upon moral issues is 
proved by the universal language of mankind. Who 
ever heard of a liuman tono;ue which, did not make 
clear the distinction of riolit and wrono; and the 
binding obligation of all to choose the right ? Cer- 
tainly, if there be anywhere an exception to the rule, 
that but proves tlie existence of a tribe of men who 
have fallen below or else have not risen to the sphere 
of accountable freedom. In the civilized world, at 
least, he would be adjudged an idiot whose vocab- 
ulary did not hold the ideas of right and wrong, 
ought and ought not, duty and sin, virtue and vice. 
l^eed it be said that the universal language of man- 
kind is a truthful expression of what they are and of 
what they are capable ? 



58 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

7. This is tlie great doctrine with regard to man of 
the inspired word. To quote all the proofs of this 
statement would be to repeat in substance the book. 
The high trust of moral freedom stands out in unmis- 
takable clearness in every word of command, of pro- 
hibition, of promise, of w^arning, of approval, of con- 
demnation. Choose ye, choose the riglit, reject the 
wrong — sum up its commands and the conditions of 
its promises. It may be added that in this all the 
books of the world, so far as they command the re- 
spect of mankind, agree. 

We may accept tlie agreement of Scripture in this 
particular with the constitution and consciousness and 
reason and language of mankind as giving to the law 
of freedom the authority of inspiration, or as adding 
strength to the argument for inspiration itself. Thr.t 
the law of freedom, resting upon a basis of evidence 
as solid as that of gravitation, finds this book of the 
ages every- where in accord with it brings to th-e book 
itself sucli a credential as the awakened scientific 
spirit of to-day reasonably asks. 

8. It may be added that this — freedom to seek 
one's own pleasure when there is no reason why one 
should not, and, when pleasure and duty conflict, to 
choose between them — is just the freedom and all 
the freedom for wdiicli we have any occasion, all 
which the untrammeled pursuit of our own happiness 
and our accountability as moral agents require. So 
much freedom it is but reasonable we should have. 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATIOX. 59 

But what do we want of more? Of wliat value to us 
could be tlie power to determine upon that which is 
required of us by no law, and which is actually con- 
trary to our pleasure? Is not the notion of such 
power self-destructive? Of what kind must be the 
power to choose that which in the conditions present 
is not our choice ? If such a power of choice were 
possible what could it be but a superfluity ? It is 
needless to state the a jpriori probability against its 
bestowment. ^"e have an accepted, adage in both 
philosophy and theology that no provision in the 
scheme of nature and providence is to be looked for 
which has not some wise end. Xature is throughout 
a scheme of providence in every part illustrative of 
the wisdom and. benevolence of its divine Author. 

FREEDOM OF MORAL AOEXCY ABSOLUTE. 

There ought to be no occasion for separate argu- 
ment under this head. Absolute freedom is nothing 
other than freedom that is freedom. It is just the 
power to decide for himself which every man has in 
his own keeping. It is freedom the loyal or guilty 
use of which cannot be forecast with probability from 
the accidents of one's birth and environments. It is 
freedom upon accountable issues by which every man 
is lifted above all circumstances not in his control 
and is placed alone in liis indjviduality before God, 
so that his moral character and standing within his 
opportunity for development depend solely on him- 



60 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

self. But this is a higher conception of freedom than 
its advocates have been wont to claim. The current 
unfaith seems to be that moral freedom is a gift 
of fickle tenure which may be sw^ayed indefinitely 
by surrounding influences ; that thus some have 
tlieir probation under conditions which make highly 
probable its successful issue and others its almost cer- 
tain failure. But can any one accept this view with 
satisfaction ? Does not even its statement expose its 
inconsistency ? 

1. Absolute freedom upon probational issues is a 
just expectation. Is it not the clearest dictate of 
reason that a freedom for which w^e are lield account- 
able, and upon w4iich hangs our eternal destiny, 
should be a perfect freedom — a freedom in the exer- 
cise of which reason may not predict guilt and fail- 
ure — a freedom w^hich can neither be weakened nor 
biased, save by our ow^n guilty misuse of the trust? 
If it were possible for Omnipotence to make a man 
morally accountable with but a capricious freedom 
which could be overcome or endangered by any thing^ 
for which he is not responsible, yet we may be as- 
sured that the heavenly Father would not and could 
not do that which is so unreasonable. He is too 
wise and good to charge upon his child a sin into 
which he has been betrayed by incentives not in his 
control. ]^or w^ould it remove, though it might 
diminish, the difiiculty to suppose it possible for a 
man to resist the incentives to sin, so long as they are 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATION". 61 

supposed to furiiisli ground upon whicli reason may 
infer the probability of sin. A probation loaded 
with conditions which make failure and eternal death 
a probability would be a strange thing, to wdiicli it is 
not possible that a just God should consent. A fair 
probation, if any, is the demand of equity, and must 
be a probation of absolute freedom where w^e are 
held accountable — a probation in which the scales 
of ability and requirement are perfectly balanced, 
so that the weakest can win approval as easily as the 
strongest. 

2. The dependence of the higher freedom of moral 
agency upon the divine Spirit assures its perfection 
within its scope. In the absence of Christianizing 
agencies doubtless men are often suffered to fall into 
many irregularities which are not charged to their 
account. But wdienever and upon whatever question 
God calls men to accountable freedom, surely we need 
no other guarantee than his own name that he does 
liis work perfectly, and that the God-given freedom 
is absolute. 

3. Absolute freedom is the only tenable ground of 
moral agency. Between a freedom that may be over- 
come by massing against it motives and bald necessity 
there is but a surface difference. If it were possible 
by motive appliances to establish a probability that a 
man would do that which justice could place to his 
credit or record against him, the probability might be 
increased till, as even Whedon affirms, ^'the improba- 



62 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

bility converges to and finally may arrive at neces- 
sity " (p. 139). Doctor Wliedon's head was too level to 
attempt to retreat from this conclusion under cover of 
the distinction between certainty and necessity. Om- 
niscience, for aught any one knows, may see a future 
event to be made certain by the free choice of a moral 
agent. But the certainty or almost certainty that 
one's conduct will be praiseworthy or blameworthy 
is here inferred from the motives themselves by 
which he is environed, on the hypothesis that the 
motives afford substantial ground upon which we 
may reason. 

But all this reasoning from the increase or decrease 
of motives to the certainty or probability of conduct 
that should win the favor or incur the displeasure of* 
God proceeds on the hypothesis of necessity, which 
confounds the high trust of moral freedom with the 
non-alternative, irresponsible freedom of all the ani- 
mal tribes, and utterly mistakes the relation of motives 
to moral agency. The office of motives is not to over- 
power freedom, but to impart it. In the exact ratio 
of the increase of the motives to virtue is tlie trust of 
i\ioral freedom enlarged, thus preserving ever its per- 
fect equipoise. Motives to virtue are not dynamic 
pressures upon the will, but reasons addressed to the 
intelligent conscience. Every form of freedom is 
limited in area, yet perfect within its limit. Moral 
accountability beyond the limit of absolute freedom 
of choice is intrinsically absurd. 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATION. 63 

4. Absolute freedom of moral agency is not out of 
liarmony with known facts in human experience. If 
any one insists that as matter of fact men are in 
responsible character and eternal prospects largely 
what surrounding influences m.ake them, it is perti- 
nent to ask how he knows this. Till it be proved 
tliat the Just One has ever condemned as reprobate a 
child of his, born and trained in sin, who under better 
conditions would have received from him the great 
reward, the assumption is groundless. Against such 
unfaith it is more than suflicient to oppose the grow- 
ing and now prevalent conviction in thoughtful minds 
that the more corrupt condition of the heathen world 
does not warrant the conclusion that in the sight of 
God they are more guilty than the Christian world. 
Doubtless the scope of moral freedom is broadened by 
favoring hereditary and educational agencies resulting 
even in the wide difference between the best bred 
nations of men, few of whom are capable of the 
grosser forms of sin, and the most degraded heathen 
tribes whose accountability ranges from zero to but a 
degree above. But within the scope that the omnis- 
cient One holds each soul accountable must its free- 
dom be real and perfect. 

5. Absolute moral freedom removes the objection 
to the doctrine of probation, otherwise unanswerable, 
of conditions hard and unequal. It regards every 
member of the human family as an individual child 
of God as much as though he were the only child, and 



64 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thus places all men in opportunity to secure his favor 
and eternal life on an equality before him. Who can 
fail to see that in doing this it commends itself as 
truth ? 

But this high trust of freedom is in the nature of 
the case limited to the early and formative period of 
life. To every one whose trial-life is not prematurely 
interrupted it will come to an end in one of two ways 
— either by fulfilling its high purpose in the attain- 
ment of a character mature in moral excellence, or in 
the utter forfeiture and ruin of moral reprobacy. Our 
whole course of thought culminates in the conclusion 
tliat the pivotal question. Which way ? is one that each 
responsible agent must determine for himself as abso- 
lutely as though he were the only moral agent in the 
universe. 

Toward the one or the other of these ends every 
moral argent is steadily advancing. In the very exer- 
cise of his freedom he can impair and contract and 
destroy it, or jointly with the inworking of the Spirit 
he can so exercise it as to work out his salvation from 
the weakness that makes sin possible and rise to the 
higher freedom of the crowned sons of God to whom 
temptation is impossible. 

MORAL AGENCY THE FREEDOM OF PROBATION. 

Power to choose for one's self between tlie right 
and the wrong begins and ends with probation. The 
notion of continued freedom in this sense after pro- 



HIGHER FREEDOM— PROBATION. 65 

bation is baseless. It confounds freedom proper, which 
is inseparable from accountability, with the unchal- 
lenged outgoing of natural inclination into action 
shared by us with the inferior animals, and therefore 
rnns it agronnd. For conclusive evidence tliat free- 
dom to make one's own choice is limited to probation 
we have but to turn again to the moral constitution 
given to man. Bv the law of habit the probationer 
is in a steadily increasing ratio forming a character 
which erelong must end either in invincible rectitude 
or in helpless moral imbecility. It is thus that the 
godly man fights the good fight of faith and works 
out his salvation, and the sinner wrongs his own soul 
and receives in death the wages of sin. With this 
agree the analogies of all the kingdoms of life about 
us. By one law, running through all, every thing has 
its purpose and its period that ends in success or fail- 
ure, from the tiniest seed to the child of God in the 
school of probation. 

Moral agency being peculiar to probation may, 
therefore, with apt discrimination, be named, the free- 
dom of probation. It is better distinguished as pro- 
bational than as moral freedom. All probational 
action is moral action, but to say all moral action is 
probational might be misleading. Man acquires his 
moral character in probation, and carries it with him 
into the great future beyond. His activity will, there- 
fore, forever retain the moral character which he 
acquires in probation. But probation in the nature of 



66 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the case cannot extend indefinitely. It is limited to a 
brief period within which the soul becomes fortified 
in integrity or breaks down in moral reprobacy. 
Probation is fi-eedom's opportunity. It is the work 
of probation by the loyal nse of the will-power to lift 
inclination out of the dominion of appetite and desire 
in the lower nature up to the high level of supreme 
love for God, where henceforth the will and the incli- 
nation shall be forever in accord. 

Of the range of freedom open to the Infinit-e One 
human conceit may not presume to judge. Nor is it 
for us to prescribe bounds to the freedom of God's 
faithful children, whose probation issues in victory, 
and who have before them the limitless possibilities of 
eternal growth. But it is certain that the perfected 
children of God no longer face the only alternative 
known to mortals — choice between the right and the 
wrong. They have met and answered this prime 
question forever. The only freedom with an alterna- 
tive of which we can form any conception is in its 
nature restricted to the trial-life. 

Of course, this power to chose between the morally 
good and the morally bad which distinguishes probation 
is not freedom under easy conditions. The freedom of 
probation is not that of delightful spontaneity of move- 
ment without conscious eifort, as of a bird upon the 
wing. From a surface view to some it may seem, 
though on a higher plane, less entitled to the name 
" freedom " than the lower freedom of the mind with- 



HIGHER FREEDOM-PROBATIOX. 67 

out obstraction or question to act out its pleasure. To 
take in nncballenged innocence offered fruit which 
delights the eye and the taste is freedom perfect in its 
kind. But one may ask, Is not probation a state of 
weakness and conflict rather than of freedom ? Yes, 
probation is a state of comparative weakness ; it may 
be the weakness of a soul in youth just girding itself 
for the trial-life ; it may be the imbecility of a soul 
enfeebled by vicious habits. To think of one as capa- 
ble of a temptation to a vicious act is to regard him 
as in that particular not yet mature in moral strength. 
The freedom of probation is the freedom of the soul 
against the strivings of the Spirit to yield to tempta- 
tion, or a2:ainst the seductions of desire and the clamors 
of passion to take hold upon God in loyalty of pur- 
pose. It is not freedom mature and crowmed. Pro- 
bation is the battle of freedom. It is freedom in its 
birth-throes — its life-struggle, the tremendous issue of 
which to each individual must be eternal life or eter- 
nal death, the only contingency being his own persist- 
ent choice. Freedom to sin is the transient freedom 
which it is the work of probation to overcome. Its 
speedy outcome must be either the irreversible bond- 
ao:e of sin or the hi^-her freedom of the soul from even 
the power to sin. To say of one that he is no longer 
free to sin is to credit him with the fi'eedom of 
supreme love in the inspiration of which his faculties 
are brought into complete development — the freedom 
of perfected strength. 



V. 

PROBATION AKD REDEMPTION : OR, SPIRITUAL 

EVOLUTION. 



OUTLINE. 



Probation Our Part in Redemption. 
Probation a Bible Doctrine. 
Essentials of Probation Facts of Experience. 
On any Other Hypothesis this Life a Mystery. 
Comprehensiveness and Cost of Redemption. 
Probation a Blessing. 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION; OR, SPIRITUAL 
EVOLUTION. 



Ojjr field broadens, and its intelligent survey re- 
quires increasing care. To what intent the present 
life is given to us, and what Christianity has come to 
do for us, are fundamental and closely related ques- 
tions, and to be seen to advantage they must be taken 
together, and not in haste. These questions may in 
general terms be answered thus : Christianity has 
come to redeem us from bondage to the flesh and 
sin, and from the death otherwise inevitable, and to 
lift us up to the higher life 'and freedom of tlie sons 
of God ; and our present life is our opportunity each 
to bear the part which we alone can bear in the work 
of our redemption. In brief, the mission of the Son 
of God to us is not only to do for us something which 
w^e caimot do, but also to help us in that which we 
must do ; probation and redemption are the divine 
method in the gift to us of spiritual life. To justify 
this answer — to show that in the changeless plan of 
God we are here given a moral probation under the 
fair conditions of freedom and equality, and that to 
the w^ork of God for us in the Christian redemption 
such a probation with the responsibilities wliicli it in- 
volves is indispensable — is the purpose of this article. 



72 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

PROBATION OUR PART IN THE WORK OF REDEMPTION. 

The root idea of probation, freedom of moral 
agency, has in all the Christian ages, in spite of the 
necessitarian philosophy, been the basis upon which 
the pnlpit has made its strongest appeals to man. 
But in tlie progressive unfolding of Christian doc- 
trine the fact that this life is a school of probation for 
a future life has in recent times come into new prom- 
inence as a foundation truth. For this reason the 
doctrine of probation and its place in the redeeming 
plan demand statement. 

In defining a word we have to consider both its 
etymology and the application which usage has given 
it. The idea of probation suggested by the derivation 
of the word is trial, proof, test. But the word is 
used only in referring to free, intelligent, accountable 
beings. It is not a coin, a tree, or an unthinking an- 
imal that is the subject of probation, but a man 
who has before him a life-work in choosing his own 
path and building up a character of moral com- 
pleteness and strength. It is thus that the use of 
the word probation exalts its meaning. The pur- 
pose of human probation is not to subject man to a 
process to find out what is in him, or what he is, as 
we try a piece of ordnance to ascertain its soundness 
and strength, as we prove a tree by its fruit, iis we 
test a coin, whether it be what it claims to be. Rather 
it is to place man under conditions of perfect free- 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION. 73 

dom to elect for himself between the path of recti- 
tude and life and the sinful indulgence that leads to 
death. 

That the doctrine of probation should meet ob- 
jection fi'om tliose whose philosophy it squarely an- 
tagonizes is natural. It is avowedly out of harmony 
with views of Christian doctrine yet widely current. 
Till recent times predestinarianism and necessity have 
boldly claimed the leadership in our schools of theol- 
ogy, and though now less obtrusive they still retain 
much of their subtle hold upon prevailing habits of 
religious thought. Universalism, we do well to re- 
member, is the legitimate offspring of the theology 
and philosophy which put man in the unconditional 
power of the divine will. If necessity were the Chris- 
tian philosophy universalism ought to be true. Now, 
the doctrine that life in this w^orld is a moral probation 
strikes at the root of predestinarianism and necessity, 
and it is therefore the complete and only answer to 
universalism. It is the modern revival of Christian 
thought that is bringing this basis truth into the 
prominence to which it is entitled. 

The test of our probation is more than a sino:le 
choice of the morally right. It is the persistent, life- 
long choice of the right. The condition of final 
approval is more than a personal acceptance of Christ. 
It does not involve even a knowledge of Christ as an 
historic character. But it does involve the call of the 
Spirit to the trust of moral freedom, and the spirit of 



74 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

loyalty to the trust cherished and cultivated with the 
Spirit's help till it has become the soul's fixed habit. 
It demands conformity and transformation to the 
Christ Spirit as the ty})e of cliaracter. 

The very fact of sin proves that man is called to 
the freedom of probation. The most intelligent of 
the inferior animals cannot sin, for the reason that 
tliey have no such freedom. But for this higher free- 
dom man could not sin. The freedom that distin- 
guishes probation is the power equally to sin and to 
abstain from sin. He whose probation has closed is 
no longer under the conditions of accountable free- 
dom. He has either risen to tlie yet higher freedom 
from the weakness that can be tempted or he has 
made himself forever the slave of sin. His activ- 
ity henceforth indexes a character already fixed — 
either perfected in love for God and the morally good, 
and in habits of obedience, or broken down, ruined^ 
reprobate. Out of probation is out of the sphere of 
moral agency. 

PROBATION A BIBLE DOCTRmE, 

It is not more true that the Bible reveals God to 
man as a moral Governor than it is that from its 
alpha to its omega it reveals man to himself as an 
accountable being and a probationer for an eternal 
destiny. In the first Bible reference to man after the 
record of his creation (Gen. ii, 15-lY) we read : " The 
Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION. 75 

of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God 
commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the 
garden thou mayest freely eat : but of the tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : 
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
surely die." Here distinctly appear all the marks of 
a moral probation in the case of the first man and 
the founder of our race. (1.) He had set before him 
the will of God as his probational standard — the rule 
of his life. Pie was given a trust and a restrictive 
command. He was placed in the garden ''to dress it 
and. to keep it." (2.) Conditioned upon his obedience 
was to be eternal life in the favor of God. (3.) The 
penalty of disobedience w^as death under the divine 
displeasure. (4.) It is assumed that the man was free 
equally to obey or to disobey. 

This, let it be kept in mind, was before redemption 
from sin had become a necessity. But we must not 
conclude that in the absence of sin the first pair or 
their descendants could in their own innocence have 
risen unaided to the stature of perfected children of 
God, nor that they were born into life under any law 
of evolution the natural working of which would be 
sure at last to bring them to a predestined complete- 
ness in spiritual manhood. Plainly, to make their 
probation a success tliey would have needed, as we 
need, the tuition of heaven and the inspiration of the 
Spirit. Not improbably miglit the Son of God have 
been their spiritual Leader, as he is now of all the 



76 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

faithful of Adam's race. Spiritual help probation 
must liave. 

Need we hesitate to affirm that redemption could 
not do for man all it is doing without a probation, 
and that neither could probation stand without — shall 
we say redemption ? That would be unauthorized 
and misleading. Without sin there were no occasion 
for redemption from sin. But probation itself de- 
pends upon the gift in some form of the w^ord and 
Spirit of God to man. By no means must we infer 
that a probation necessarily involves a fall into sin. 
In the re-adjustment of our probation to the new con- 
ditions occasioned by the fall the essentials of proba- 
tion, as the word abundantly shows, remain unchanged. 
Turn where we may, we cannot fail to find the same 
great facts which characterized probation in Eden 
standing out in strong light. Every-where God 
speaks to us in terms of command, promise, warning; 
all which assumes that w^e are here in a trial-life. 
The whole is summed in the text, "' Blessed is the 
man that endureth temptation ; for when he is tried 
he shall receive the crown of life." A trial-life the 
attainment of character perfected in moral excellence 
demands. But tlie freer the trial-life is from sin the 
more complete will be its success. 

THE ESSENTIALS OF PROBATION FACTS OF EXPERIENCE. 

The decisive teachings of the word upon our ques- 
tion accord with what we know of ourselves and of 



PROBATION AXD REDEMPTION. '77 

the conditions under which we are living. In other 
words, the essentials of probation are every-daj ex- 
periences in human life. (1.) There is a law of con- 
science within us demanding integrity to our moral 
convictions, or, which is in substance the same, loyalty 
to our consciousness of obligation to a God above us. 
(2.) Conditioned on our conformity to this reasonable 
standard there is sure reward — the elate conscious- 
ness of soul-uprightness with self-respect, the sweet- 
ness of virtue, and the smile of Heaven. (3.) Equally 
certain is the penalty of disobedience — remorse, 
blight, degradation, death to all that makes life dear. 
(4.) "We know ourselves to be perfectly free to con- 
form to or to deviate from the required standard, 
and we are conscious of moral obligation rightly to 
use our freedom. We hold others, and cannot help 
holding them, to like responsibility. We are daily, 
hourly, working out the problem of our probation. 
We are sowing seeds for future harvests of life or 
death. Every to-morrow is lai'gely what w^e make it, 
and each day is probationary to the days which follow 
it. So by clear analogy may we rightly infer that 
the wliole of life here is probationary to an eternal 
day or an eternal night to come after it as the 
legitimate consequence of its improvement or mis- 
improvement. 

We have thus a solid basis of facts corroborative 
of the testimony of the word that the present life 
is probationary to a future life. 



*JS THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ON ANY OTHER HYPOTHESIS THIS LIFE IS A MYSTERY 
AND CHRISTIANITY IS SEEN TO DISADVANTAGE. 

But we have the greater fact of life itself to ac- 
count for. Why are we here under conditions of 
freedom, accountability, trial ? We may safely affirm 
that no other hypothesis than that this life is a proba- 
tion gives satisfactory answer, and at the same time 
that no other does justice to the mission of Christ in 
our world. 

The popular theory of liberal Christians, accepted 
also by non-Christian thinkers generally, seems to be 
that life here is in its proper intent purely educa- 
tional, a school for the development and culture and 
training of the human faculties. In this view Chris- 
tianity is regarded as a system of appliances for the 
full and bright unfolding of the natural man, and 
thus the evolution from the natural of the spiritual 
man. That education is a work demanding in this 
life universal and earnest attention there is none to 
dispute. Christians of all names recognize education 
as a great need of mankind, and Christianity as in 
God's plan the great educator. Education as a serv- 
ant of religion has a royal mission. But it is auxiliary 
to the real work of life rather than comprehensive of 
its high purpose. Life here is more than a school, 
and Christ is more than a teacher. 

If this life were but a school, and Christianity had 
no other work than just to educate mankind, and they 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION. 79 

had no ot'Jier freedom than tliat whicli could be con- 
trolled by educational appliances, then Christianity 
ought to be completely successful in educating men — 
that is, such machine men as that conception supposes 
possible. But Christianity does not find every man a 
plastic subject in its hand ready to be fashioned to 
the perfect pattern which it offers. As an educator 
Christianity cannot be claimed as a universal success. 
N'or does this theory find much help in the suggestion 
that the work of education has here only its small 
beginning. According to the theory in question 
there is no conceivable reason why education should 
be so slow and fickle. As matter of fact, where Chris- 
tianity has man to advantage, it educates him grandly 
even in the early years of his natural growth. But 
who can fail to see that in numberless instances it is 
not Christianity that educates, and therefore it is not 
manly men who are the product of education ? The 
work of education in many cases begins wrong and 
goes wTong to the end, and thus forebodes an inglori- 
ous future. If some, faithful to the trust of education, 
give evidence that they are graduating upward, are 
not others as evidently through their own perversity 
degenerating? Sin has proved itself a foe wdiich 
education single-handed is powerless to overcome. 
How often has sin made education a curse alike to its 
possessor and to those who come w^ithin range of its 
breath ! Education brings permanent good to man so 
far only as it is employed in probational fidelity. 



80 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

On tlie liypotliesis that life in tliis world is bnt a 
spliere for the evolution and culture of a race of in- 
telligences subject only to tlie sure working of natural 
law we might reasonably expect the reign of universal 
order instead of as now prevailing disorder. The 
facts of disorder and degeneracy so manifest on every 
liand prove the presence of a disturbing agency. 
Tliis woi'ld, surely, is not an ideal scliool designed to 
perfect the development of beings having no other 
freedom than to obey the will of God as embodied in 
natural law. If it were, we might be assured that 
nothing unclean, repulsive, and degrading would find 
entrance here, but every-wliere would appear order, 
beauty, growth, and to all living beings felicit3\ 
Plainl}^, it is not in the purpose of God to keep sin 
out of this world, but rather to make man equally 
free to both obedience and sin, that he may form a 
character strictly his own, for which he alone is 
responsible. 

It has been the special merit of evangelical Chris- 
tians that, while not unmindful of the educational 
work of life, they have at the same time brought into 
due prominence the remedial aim of Christianity. It 
has been a common and misleading error with them 
that they have regarded Christianity too exclusively 
in its remedial character. They have wisely faced 
the fact of sin with the condemnation and degradation 
which sin has brought upon mankind. They look 
upon the world of humanity as lost — dead in sin — and 



PROBATIOX AND REDEMPTION. 81 

with the doom of eternal woe haiighig as a just penalty 
over tliem, and they turn with rapturous awe to the 
gracious remedy come down from heaven with the 
offer of redemption. 

A vivid conception of man as a sinner, and of the 
gospel plan for his recovery, has had much to do in 
giving direction as well as color to Christian thought ; 
and that this is legitimate is proved by the example 
of the inspired apostles. But our theological teachers 
have been prone to ignore or pass lightly the question 
what must have been the original purpose of the 
Creator in man's earthly life, and to begin with the 
transgression in Eden as though it were sin alone 
which made the Son of God and the Holy Spirit of 
God a necessity. On the hypothesis that Christianity 
is nothing but a scheme for the recovery of man from 
the ruin wrought by sin they proceed to base upon 
the fall, as though there we come to the foundation 
need of man, their entire theological structures — re- 
demption through the great atonement, and all the 
gifts and work of the Spirit which now come to 
us through the Christian redemption — justification, 
regeneration, sanctification, perfection in Christ-like- 
ness. Christianity comes to man, we are taught, or 
at least left to conclude, just to rescue him from a 
lost condition. His preparation for the life of heaven 
is simply his restoration from a fallen state. 

The salvation of man from sin is, indeed, a great 

necessity. Christianitv finds man a sinner, and it 
6 



82 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

adjusts its agencies to liis peculiar needs as a sinner. 
It is impossible, however, that the one-sided view 
which supposes the recovery of man from a fallen 
state to comprehend the whole purpose of Christianity, 
sliould be satisfactory to thinking minds. The notion 
that man is placed in this world to pass through the 
experiences of a fall and a redemption as essential 
antecedents to the life of heaven is obviously unrea- 
sonable. It may be true that a moral agent rarely 
exercises his freedom from the beginning to the end 
of the trial-life in unvarying loyalty to the right. 
We may reasonably infer the probability that some 
will sin in a world of moral agents, not from any 
necessity upon them, but because they are all as free 
to the wrong as to the right. We know that sin pre- 
vails widely among men. Bat we know, too, that 
sin brings no good to man, but only condemnation, 
blight, and death. The path of life is the path of 
obedience, and from this any responsible deviation 
involves irreparable loss. To turn aside into any 
by-way of sin in a single instance is to miss one of 
life's opportunities and abridge its possibilities. It is 
like the Son of God to come to the sinner with the 
offer of redemption, and, to this end, to spare not 
himself. But even the great Redeemer can do the best 
thing alone for the man who does his best by un- 
swerving fidelity. One^s own sins are not included in 
the all things which work together for his good. We 
cannot at the same time love God and sin as^ainst God. 



PKOBATIOX AXD REDEMPTION. 83 

With equal emphasis may it be said tliat the theory 
which would hnd the sole or chief purpose of this 
life and of the mission of Christ to us in the work of 
recovery from a lapsed state is not in accord with the 
Bible view. He who will take the trouble to look 
through the jN^ew Testament with this question before 
him will find that the relative prominence of the re- 
medial as compared with the probational aim of its 
teachings may be not inaptly likened to the degree 
of attention of a sensible parent to the work of heal- 
ing in the rearing of his children to physical man- 
hood, in comparison with his constant care properly 
to feed them and clothe them and guide them to 
obedience to the laws upon which health and growth 
depend. 

More than remedial as well as more than educa- 
tional must be the purpose of God in our earthly life 
and in the mission of the Son of God to us. It 
reaches the high, broad aim to afiord us in life's be- 
ginning opportunity to achieve character of our own 
which God and all intelligent beings who know us 
must forever approve as praiseworthy. On both the 
inferior hypotheses named the present life, it is fair 
to say, remains an enigma, and Christianity is seen to 
great disadvantage through false perspective. We 
get but a corner-wise glimpse which reveals but im- 
perfectly the work of Christianity even as an educa- 
tor and a restorer, and quite fails to show the breadth 
of its redemptive purpose. 



84 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The theories whicli recognize no higher purpose of 
God in man's earthly life than to lift him up from a fallen 
condition and educate hiin are either avowedly or im- 
pliedly necessitarian in philosophy. To redeem such 
an automaton as necessity logically makes man would 
be comparatively a small thing. It makes man him- 
self to be but a thing only a degree higher in tlie scale 
of nature than the brute, and the work of his redemp- 
tion, if the word may be used in so low a sense, to be 
quite akin to tlie conversion of a wild colt by taming 
and training into a serviceable horse. We rise to a 
worthy conception of the Son of God as a redeemer 
only when we behold the man to be redeemed, not as 
a mere plastic subject under the hand of power and 
skill, but as a moral agent entering by grace under 
the master's care and lead the sublime arena of a pro- 
bation for a crown of life. What the Son of God does 
for us is to prepare us and help us to work out our own 
salvation. It is not the healing nor the educating, 
nor even the forgiving and the cleansing, but it is the 
doing that assures for us the offered crown. They 
who strive for the mastery in contests requiring phys- 
ical agility and strength must receive and submit to 
the prescriptions of skilled physicians as well as to 
the drill of master-trainers. But these preliminaries 
are forgotten as soon as the race begins. They ai-e 
not named at the end of the race-course. It is what 
the contestant has done himself that determines the 
award. So in the only account we have of the final 



PROBATIOX AND REDEMPTION. 85 

awards of the judgment. There it is not what the 
Redeemer has done for us, but our own life-work as 
probationers, that comes in review. Redemption is 
not chiefly hospital work. It comprehends all that is 
involved in the transformation of one born only of 
the flesh into a spiritual man complete in the like- 
ness of the Son of God. In this great change the 
man himself has something to do. We have each to 
bear a f reedman's part in our own redemption. We are 
each to work out our own salvation. Our probation is 
a gift, and its faithful improvement is a condition of 
redemption. 

COMPREHENSIVENESS AND COST OF REDEMPTION. 

Perfectly to grasp the Christian redemption, which 
even the angels desired to look into, for the present 
we may not hope. But if we would, look at it to 
advantage we must have a just conception of the 
comprehensiveness of its purpose. There is no sub- 
stantial gain but has its cost. Take a tract of waste 
land. To clear it of the stumps and rocks and nox- 
ious growths that cumber it, to drain it and grade 
it and fertilize it, to bring out the latent possibilities 
of its soil, and to convert it into a paradise of gardens 
and. orchards and lawns, will cost time, toil, money, 
skill, patience, with not improbably aches and bruises. 
To save a child of the flesh, even though innocent, 
from the decay and death inevitable if left to the 
course of nature, and convert him into a full-grown 



86 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

son of God, wo may expect will be at a cost propor- 
tionately greater as a child of God is of more valne 
than the acres made to serve him as a footstool in his 
preparatory life. 'No mother ever gave life to a 
son and bore her part in bringing liim up to a noble 
manhood, however true he may have been, but it cost 
her protracted labor, the facing of death for him, high 
endeavor, and habitual self-sacrifice with tears. But 
the gift of a faithful mother, w^th her wealth of love 
and her unwearied devotion, is but the first install- 
ment in the costly outlay it is in the heart of the 
heavenly Fatlier to bestow upon every child of his 
great family. He comes to us, too, by other human 
agencies as well as by the ministry of angels. Yea, 
to every soul of man he comes himself in the person 
of his divine Son, and by the agencies of his Spirit, 
with the offer of a new birth into vital union with 
himself; and to those who receive him he comes and 
abides with them in fulfillment of the promise, '' Lo, I 
am with you alway." If all the sons of men had 
been faithful to the trust of probation it is not easy 
to see how any item in this summary of costs could be 
spared. 

Inspired history has given us a glimpse of the 
expense at which the divine Father undertook the 
spiritual transformation of the first child of the flesh 
in his innocence. He made him as he made the in- 
ferior animals, of the dust of the ground. Then, to 
enable this child of earth to become a son of God, he 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION. 87 

breathed into liim the breath of soul-life. In other 
words, he called him to the freedom of a moral proba- 
tion, and he environed him with probational conditions 
and advantages. He formed and fitted up this world 
to be his probationary abode. He came to him per- 
sonally and talked with him, and gave him all needed 
instructions. He brouglit him into personal relations 
to himself as the subject of his moral government. 
He also placed the man in moral relations to the com- 
panion he provided for him and the children which 
he gave them. 

Doubtless it is in the fact of sin that redemption 
finds the necessity for its costliest sacrifice. To re- 
deem the sinning man we know has cost the blood of 
the incarnate Son. If sin had not entered our world 
we may not affirm that the bringing of a child of 
the flesh to spiritual manhood w^ould have cost a 
divine incarnation and a blood atonement, though as 
to what would have been necessary in that case it 
becomes us to be sparing of negatives. But even in 
the absence of sin the complete transformation of a 
child of the flesh to the likeness of Christ must in each 
individual case have been a great and costly work. 

In a sinless world no less than under present condi- 
tions there must come in their proper order to each 
soul as essentials of spiritual development the begin- 
nings of consciousness of moral accountability and of 
child-relationship to God; the experience of justi- 
fication in the right use of freedom duly witnessed 



88 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by the spirit ; sanctification, or the conscious setting 
apart of one's self for the service of God, with the 
assurance that the offering is accepted, and tlie inten- 
tional going on to perfection in moral and reh'gions 
character. 

The call of man to the freedom and responsibilities 
of probation was the first dispensation of the Spirit to 
him, and through all the succeeding dispensations, the 
patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian, probation 
has continued in essentials the same. Redemption 
comprehends probation, and Christianity includes all 
that God has done for us and all that can be done to 
make our probation a complete success. It is the Son 
of God come down to the natural man to lift him out 
of the realm of necessity under natural law and the 
dominion of sin into the freedom of a moral agent 
building a character for himself, and, with his faithful 
concurrence, to transform him into a child of God 
and a perfected spiritual man. 

Our conclusion gives us the true stand-point from 
which to view the long-disputed question of the atone- 
ment. It would be irrelevant here to take up the 
controversy between the governmental and the moral 
influence theories. But it is pertinent to note that 
not till w^e clearly discriminate between the original 
dependence of man in his innocence upon help from 
above in order to the success of his preparatory life, 
and his need of redemption as a sinner, are we pre- 
pared to inquire intelligently upon this question. 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTION. 80 

PROBATION A BLESSING. 

Probation is a great blessing is the just conclusion. 
No millionaire can buy for his son a well-furnished 
mind, nor in any way secure it for him that shall 
spare him the labor of faithful, persistent study. No 
more can the heavenly Father by creative power or 
redeeu:iing love do for his children that which can be 
a substitute for a well-improved trial-life. The blame- 
worthiness of moral reprobacy can befall no one save by 
his guilty neglect and abuse of a fair probation, and 
one equal in opportunity for securing his favor with 
that of his saints who attain the highest rank in his king- 
dom. Neitlier can tlie praiseworthiness upon which 
is and must be conditioned the reward of eternal 
life be bestowed or attained, or in any way come to us, 
except we each for ourselves choose the path of obedi- 
ence and meet the tests of probation faithful to tlie 
end. Character that shall deserve the divine approval 
Ave mast each form for ourselves. That all reward- 
able conduct is probational is an axiom. 

If it seem good to the heavenly Father that those 
who from death in infancy or from the benighting 
influences of heathenism do not rise here to the sphere 
of moral accountability shall be translated at once to 
such a heaven of beauty and felicity as they may be 
capable of without a probation, what is that to us? 
Wonderful things in the realm of irresponsible being 
must be in the power of an omnipotent Creator. The 



90 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

world of vegetable and animal life known to us suggests 
limitless possibilities on this lower plane. Who shall 
say there may not be forever open to the children of 
light celestial conservatories and parks far surpassing 
in attractiveness our highest present conceptions? It 
is conceivable that an order of intelligences the equal 
of man misrht exist w^ith no ]ii2:her freedom than to 
act tlieir own pleasure. Man himself, if that had 
been the will of his Maker, like his mute friends that 
acknowledge him their master, might have had all his 
natural appetites so balanced by natural checks, and 
have been so held in his proper relations by natural 
affections, as to have found his inclinations always in 
the order of his own and universal well-being, and 
thus have been alike incapable of disobeying or rising 
above nature. Doubtless he might at the same time 
have been furnished with incentives which would have 
assured high intellectual activity and development. 
There seems no reason to doubt that without the free- 
dom and trials of probation our world might have 
been made the home of a race of intellectual princes, 
and earth itself a very paradise of beauty. 

But superior to the possibilities of being under such 
conditions, as moral excellence surpasses the simply 
beautiful, as the spiritual transcends the material, as 
heaven is higher than the earth, is the eternal life 
made possible to us by the trust of probation. Pro- 
bation is man's opportunity to form a character of his 
ov/n of moral completeness and sturdiness as well as 



PROBATION AND REDEMPTIOiN". 91 

purity ; to win the favor of God and come into a joy- 
ful consciousness of his presence ; to secure and 
deserve the respect and love and fellowship of all 
God's faithful children ; to enjoy all the fruits of 
moral worthiness — self-respect, a royal conscience, 
and the sweetness of holy affections — and to be the 
heir of God to the freedom of his universe. 

The motive value of the doctrine of this article 
would gain nothing from elaborate statement. The 
light which it pours upon the whole field of Christian 
inquiry, and its effect as a vitalizing tonic to Christian 
faith, have no need of such aid. Let it suffice to 
notice here that it conditions the highest zeal in Chris- 
tian endeavor. Genuine zeal in Christian work re- 
quires sympathy with Christ and sympathy with our 
fellow-men. But a healthy sympathy in both these 
directions demands a just conception at the same time 
of the work Christ has come to do for us and of the 
work he expects every man to do for himself. A con- 
secrated Christian disciple who looks upon his fellow- 
man only in his character as a sinner under sentence, 
upon the mission of Christ as restricted to redemption 
from sin, and upon himself as divinely set apart to 
snatch sinners as brands from the fire w^io but for his 
service would be left to perish, has the outfit of a 
religious zealot, perhaps some degrees higher in the 
scale than a devout Jesuit ; and for him the Master 
may have a place. Love for God and love for fel- 
low-souls may keep him in spiritual health in spite 



92 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the narrowness wliicli otherwise would make him 
a crazy fanatic. But the zeal of such workers is 
likely to spend itself chiefly in bringing sinners to the 
altar and the font. Their converts are spiritually but 
babes. It is the work of the Church to mother these 
little ones as well as others born and born ao^ain in her 
own households, and through her cultured pastors and 
teachers and her various organizations to bring them 
up to spiritual manhood. Need it be said that a clear 
recognition of the life of probation to which they are 
called, and of the great redemption through the Son 
of God which they need and may have from the 
threshold of probation to their perfection in Christ- 
likeness at the gate of lieaven, makes possible a sym- 
pathy with botli liim and tliem otherwise quite im- 
possible? 

A probation of freedom divinely inspired and there- 
fore perfect, and that offers to all upon the best pos- 
sible terms a crown of life eternal and a redemption 
that comprehends such a probation, and in self-sacri- 
ficing love comes down with vitalizing power even 
to the dead in sin — to such a probation and such a 
redemption what objection can reason make ? What 
more could the heavenly Father have done for us than 
he has done? 



VI. 

THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM; OR, SPIRITUAL 
, BIOGENESIS. 



OUTLINE 



The Inspired Word our Text-Book of Freedom. 
Threefold Work of the Spirit as a Liberator. 
What the New Birth does for Man. 

1. It is more than a restoration from Lipse into sin. 

2. It introduces man into a new hfe, and deUvers him from the 

thralldom of the flesh. 

3. It enfranchises him as a child of God and a citizen of the king- 

dom of God. 
What the Man Himself has to Do in his New Birth. 
Necessity and Reasonableness of the New Birth. 
A Key to Two Difficult Problems : 

1. The spiritual condition and needs of children. 
• 2. Salvation for the heathen. 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM; OR, SPIRITUAL 

BIOGENESIS. 



Ix man's capacity for God and need of God we 
come to tlie source of tnitli on the question of 
freedom. Help from above and a higher than animal 
freedom are related as means and end. A creature 
with the freedom of an independent actor is a natural 
impossibility. All finite beings hold whatever free- 
dom they have in dependence upon tlie Infinite One, 
and bounded by the limits he has fixed. The ox 
within his inclosure is at liberty to roam and graze at 
his pleasure, but his pleasure can never be other than 
that to which his animal propensities prompt him. 
His freedom is not power to choose for himself be- 
tween alternatives. It is simply liberty to act out his 
master-inclination. So of all the animal tribes, includ- 
ing man himself, till a divine voice calls him to come 
up into a higher than earthy life. A broader freedom 
than to take a choice he did not make is impossible 
to the unassisted natural man. 

It is absurd to look for celestial fruit from the nur- 
series of earth till there come into them new life-cur- 
rents by grafts from the celestial gardens. Wliat is 
the life attained by the birth of the flesh but a life 
subject to the flesh ? Ascent in the scale of intellect 



96 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

does not alone confer a new kind of freedom. True, 
if man's higher mental endowment could give him 
the power to choose, it would at the same time consti- 
tute him an accountable being. Elective freedom is 
itself accountable freedom. But it is in the voice of 
God calhng him to duty in denial of self that man 
iirst finds a real alternative to inclination. Out of 
God man can no more rise to the freedom of an elector 
than can a horse or a mole. 

Ilow far in the darkness of heathenism man attains 
to this higher freedom is pi'actically equivalent to the 
question to what extent the Spirit of God comes to 
man independently of Christianizing agencies. We 
do not know. Doubtless other families than that of 
Abraham have been called to special missions. But 
it seems to be a well-established fact that savage 
tribes generally, from generation to generation, 
through succeeding centuries, if not millenniums, 
show no signs of progress any more than do the wild 
beasts upon which they prey. Degeneracy, rather, in 
many cases, is the evident tendency, putting them in 
this particular in unfavorable comparison with the 
brute creation. Advance is not in the established 
order of unassisted nature. 

Surely no natural law of evolution accounts for that 
in man w^iich makes him man — a being who thinks, 
chooses, speaks, worships, progresses, lives forever. A 
man is more than an animal, and in all that he is more 
than an animal he is a miracle. Whatever the natural 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 97 

history of tlie animal man it must have been at the first 
bj a miracle that lie was lifted up into the spheres of 
moral agency and spiritual life — a miracle, though 
upon a subject less exalted, not less marked than that 
which attended the cominii: of the second Adam. 
Such, from the beginning tlu'ough succeeding genei'a- 
tions, lias been the divine method in bringing the 
children of the flesh into the experience of children 
of God. Man, in each individual experience, becomes 
a free, accountable beino- by an inbreathino^ of the 
Spirit of God ; and, distinct from tliis, every one 
conies, who comes at all, into the higher life and free- 
dom of a child of God by a spiritual regeneration — a 
new birth into a consciousness of God as a Father. 

THE INSPIRED WORD OUR TEXT-BOOK OF FREEDOM. . 

A sound philosophy can never fail to be in accord 
with the inspired word. The boohs of God are in 
harmony. We do not, however, come to the word 
to seek indorsement for our conclusion that the work 
of the Spirit in man is a necessity of freedom. Rather 
we have sought to trace the need in human nature of 
tlie great change revealed in the word and to find its 
place in the plan of God for the perfect development 
of his children. Our able and patient explorers in the 
reahns of natural history, Christian and non-Christian, 
can teach us, and were sent to teach us, many things 
we need to knovr. As disciples eager for the truth 
wherever found let us sit at their feet and learn from 



98 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

them what they may discover for us of truth in their 
several fields. But our present question is not at i^ll 
one of natural science nor of speculative philosophy. 
All the testimony the world's acknowledged sages in 
these departments have for us, tlie protest of a hesi- 
tating minority of Christian teachers alone excepted, 
is summed up in the broad negation, in which from 
Plato to Herbert Spencer they substantially agree, 
that they find no room and can see no possibility for 
any higher freedom for man than the power each one 
has, within his own little world, to will and to do as 
he pleases — to obey his prevailing inclination. And 
from the point of view of the naturalist, who recog- 
nizes no other than natural law, they reason justly to 
the conclusion of necessity. 

The Son of God alone opens to us the way of escape 
from the universal bondage ; and he does this, not by 
proclaiming a new philosophy, but by the revelation 
and inspiration of a new life. Strange that his fol- 
lowers have been so slow to look to his word as their 
text-book of freedom, and for freedom itself to the 
inspiration of his Spirit? Regarding his response 
to the Jewish rabbi simply as a classic quoted, not as 
authority, but for illustration, as we quote Homer and 
Shakespeare, no other reference in the literature of 
time to the rising of the soul of man above the plane 
of an animal life into the realm of the spiritual will 
bear comparison with it in naturalness, clearness, and 
comprehensiveness; and in harmony with it is the trend 



THE NEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. 99 

and spirit of the word from the beginning to the end. 
In all time God has, with no respect of persons, lielped 
all men to do that which he has required of them as 
the condition of his favor. But in the progressive 
unfolding of his truth it may be said, in general 
terms, that the Old Testament emphasized to man his 
need of God, and the Xew Testament opens to him 
more clearly the way to God. 

" O that I knew where I might find him ! " cries 
Job. '*My heart and my flesh crieth out for the liv- 
ing God," exclaims the psalmist. '^ Come unto me," 
answers the great Revealer. '' I am the vray, and the 
truth, and the life." " I am the vine, ye are the 
branches." ^' Abide in me, and I in you." ^'Except 
a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God." " That which is born of the flesh is flesli, and 
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." " ^vliirvel 
not tliat I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew." 
" If therefore tlie Son shall make you free, ye shall be 
free indeed." '*Mv Lord and mv God!" exultino;ly 
cries even Thomas, as he looks fur himself upon the 
risen Christ. "As many as received .him," adds the 
beloved disciple, '^to them gave he power to become 
the sons of God, even to them that believe on his 
name : which were born, not of blood, nor of the will 
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 
'• The natural man," testifies Paul, '* receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness 
ur.to him : neither can he know them, because thev are 



100 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

spiritually discerned." "The law of the Spirit of life 
in Clirist Jesus made me free from the law of sin and 
death." " As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they 
are the sons of God." " Ye, brethren, were called for 
freedom." " Delivered from the bondage of corrup- 
tion into the glorious liberty of the children of God." 
'' Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 
" Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith 
Christ hath made ns free." All which plainly teaches 
nsthat the beginning of freedom to rise out of soul- 
bondage to the flesh depends on the Spirit of God, 
and that to come into the fullness of freedom as chil- 
dren of God we must personally accept Christ as a 
life-giving Saviour and be born of God. 

THREEFOLD WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A LIBERATOR. 

It would be interesting to note analogies between 
the beginnings and development of natural and spir- 
itual life ; but in the present stage of inquiry it may 
be quite as interesting and more profitable to leave 
the student in biology for the greater part to trace 
sucli analogies for himself. lie may, assuredly, find 
in the unfoldini>'S of the new science valid illustration 
of the New Testament doctrine of the necessity, in 
order to admittance to the kingdom of God, of a new 
life begotten from above. Let us c^me at once to our 
question — the work of the Spirit as a liberator from 
the bondage of the flesh. This work includes three 
distinct dispensations of the Spirit, which clearness, 



THE NEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. IQl 

as well as common usage, requires us to distinguish. 
The first two may be called antecedents of the new 
birth. 

1. There is the voice of God in the conscience of 
man. That the voice of God is heard to-day in every 
liuman conscience we may not affirm. God dispenses 
his gifts in wisdom. How far in the absence of co- 
operating human agencies he bestows his enhghtening 
and convicting and renewing Spirit is a question tlie 
word has not answered for ns, and one upon which 
speculation cannot assure us. The Light which light- 
eth every man coming into the world ma}^ not for 
every man have found the opportune occasion. There 
is reason to conclude that where the divinely appointed 
means for the world's evangelization are wanting a 
godless conscience and, with it, a condition of spiritual 
sterility widely, though not universally, prevail. 

But that God does under favoring conditions come 
to man in his consciencCj transmuting man's own judg- 
ments of what is right into convictions of duty and 
giving them the sanction of divine supremacy over 
every appetite and desire which collide with them, 
may be assumed as a fact of experience recognized by 
all theists, as well as a basis truth of the inspired 
word. This voice of authority in the conscience of 
man is his call to the high trust of moral agency. 
Even this might be not inaptly styled a new birth. It 
is the birth of consciousness in man of relationship to 
a supreme power above him to which he owes alle- 



102 THK DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

glance. Is it not tlie first quickening of the soul from 
embryo? It first presents to man a motive to resist 
natural appetite or desire, and is therefore the begin- 
ning of alternative and responsible freedom. Con- 
science, or consciousness of moral obligation, includes 
in it consciousness of freedom to choose what one 
sees and feels to be right against natural inclination, 
as every whole includes its parts. 

By the loyal use of even this first gift of elective 
freedom, through the call of God in his conscience, 
one may attain noble qualities of character. Without 
a distinctive Christian consciousness, if that be not 
his fault, yet with other conditions that favor his 
moral development, especially the better ethical cult- 
ure of partially Christianized communities, one may 
become a worthy son, brother, friend, husband, father, 
citizen. If he is such truly, his stej)s are headed in 
the right direction. Yea, more : by persistently heed- 
ing the voice of God in his conscience he is forming 
a character which God must delight in and reason 
every-where approve. Nor will his moral worthiness 
be mere will-work. God has so made man and so 
works in him that obedience to the right cultivates 
love for the right, and the fixed habit of obedience 
forever enthrones love for all that is seen to be good, 
and fills the soul with the sweetness of love. 

One cannot, however, turn away from God and set 
up for himself as a man of conscience. We can be 
truly conscientious only as we are loyal to God to the 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 103 

extent that a knowledge of God is within our reach. 
Doubtless, with the light of God in the conscience 
only a man can meet the conditions to him of the 
divme favor. But, plainly, in order to liis complete 
spiritual development man has need of more of the 
light of God than is given in his conscience. 

2. Next, as a preparatory dispensation, usually, if 
not always, in connection with the agency of Christian 
workers, the Spirit comes to man with an awakening 
voice, convicting him of his deeper spiritual needs — 
that he was made to be a child of God, and that God 
is his soul's great want ; that he needs pardon, reno- 
vation, reconstruction, a new life. If there be those 
who have not sinned wdllfuUy — such there may be — 
yet as they are n:iade to see themselves in the light of 
God they instinctively loathe their groveling tenden- 
cies, and, without waiting till they are able to discrim- 
inate between sin, in the lighter sense, as a natural 
proclivity of the fleshly life and the guilty transgres- 
sion which incurs the divine displeasure and wrongs 
the soul, they cry out at once for deliverance from 
their bondage, and with an eagerness, it would seem, 
in ratio, not to their culpability, but rather to their 
freedom from the moral paralysis induced by actual 
transgression. 

8. The problem how the newly awakened spiritual 
need can be met and the soul-liberty of the children 
of God attained admits but one answer — an uplift 
into the consciousness of child-relationship to God 



104 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

commonly denoted by the word " conversion " or by 
the phrase '^ the new birtli." 

There is a higher law than that of conscience — the 
law of love. Or, shall we rather say, there is a royal 
conscience in which love casts out fear and becomes 
the supreme law ? To meet the full claims of an 
enlightened conscience and reach his highest possibil- 
ities njan mnst not only be true to his own judgments 
of what is right quickened by the Spirit into convic- 
tions of duty, but he must come to know and love 
God as a Father and delight to do his will. Can a 
man do this ? Not in his own unaided strength, any 
more than by his own will-power he can change his 
body of flesh into a spiritual body and rise unassisted 
into heaven. Freedom to control natural inclination 
and rise above the flesh into the realm of the moral 
and the spiritual is not, and it is inconceivable that it 
should be, a natural endowment of man. To attain 
this higher freedom we must come consciously into 
spiritual union with God. 

This new experience, however, as we have seen, is 
not the beginning of the Spirit's work in man, and, 
therefore, it is not the beo^innino^ of elective freedom 
any more than his natural birth is the beginning of 
his existence. As the infant at his birth into con- 
sciousness has already had an antecedent embryo life, 
so the work of the Spirit in conversion is always pre- 
ceded by certain antecedent agencies of the Spirit ; 
in responsible years, God in the conscience of man call- 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 105 

ing ]uin to duty in denial of self, and in the awaken- 
ing of conviction of liis spiritual needs. Doubtless 
the Spirit works, too, in the little ones of the kingdom 
throngh their Christian training, perfectly meeting 
all their spiritual needs. It is, indeed, in the case of 
children growing np in the nurture of religion in 
Heaven's own order that we trace most clearly a law 
of spiritual biogenesis. In tlie dawn of the new life 
often perceptible in irresponsible childhood when 
blessed with faithful Christian nurture, we have surely 
that which may be fitly regarded as a condition of 
spiritual embryo analogous to the antebirth life in the 
invariable order of physical development. Of course, it 
is not expected that a miracle of grace will do for babes 
the proper work of growth, and rush them premature- 
ly into the experiences of full-grown saints. It is not 
the fault of babes in development that they have not 
yet come to birth into moral and spiritual personality. 
Previous to conversion there is a state w^hich it 
seems proper to regard as one of spiritual embryo, 
and certainly up to that time there is nothing more 
than an embryo spiritual life. May it admit of ques- 
tion whether the probation of the child of God even 
subsequent to his conversion is not also properly in- 
cluded in the period of spiritual embryo ? And may 
the breadth of the Master's '' Ye must be born 
anew " find its full realization only when the faithful 
disciple escapes from the present fleshly environment 
into the perfected life of the spirit world ? 



106 THE DEMOCRACY OF CEIRISTIANITY. 

That suggestion lias been plausibly maintained. It 
must be admitted that in place of the phrase ^'born of 
God," in the Common Version, the Revised Version, 
in better accord with the original, with a single ex- 
ception, reads " begotten of God." It is pertinently 
asked, " Is not the child begotten before he is born ? " 
It must be admitted, too, that, unless in the discourse 
to Isicodemus, the designation of the new experience 
in conversion as a new hii'th is without direct Script- 
ure sanction. It is well for disciples not to be over- 
confident. Doubtless we have new things to learn. 
But the argument is not all on one side. To speak of 
those who have been born of God as '' begotten of 
God " is not unnatural. On what ground, however, 
in Scripture or reason, may w^e claim for death so 
great a mission as this hypothesis assumes? It must 
not be overlooked that in the conversion of a man to 
God there is a great change. Does he not thereby so 
rise above the dominion of the flesh into the conscious- 
ness of a new life as to amount in fact to a new birth ? 
Could the change experienced find a fitter name ? 
Does not the New Testament account the converted 
man a child of God already in the kingdom of God ? 
For what it is worth, moreover, it may be added that 
on any other hypothesis than that the change in con- 
version is a new birth there is apparent no analogy 
between it and any corresponding event in the devel- 
opment of physical life. But if there remain here a 
question of Scripture interpretation in no way does it 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 107 

involve our question of freedom in probation ; and, 
assuredly, we shall be understood in calling the new 
experience in conversion a new birth. 

WHAT THIS NEW BIETFI DOES FOR MAN. 

The question w^hat this new birth does for man is 
answered in general terms by the conclusion we have 
reached. But the case justifies fuller statement. 
The necessity of the new birth follows as a corollary 
from the inadequacy of the birth of the flesh. The 
new birth does for man what the birth of the flesh 
could not do, and just what he needs to have done to 
start him on the higher plane of a spiritual life. 

1. The new birth is a good deal more than restora- 
tion from lapse into sin. It is to every man a restora- 
tion just to the extent that sin — his own or that of his 
ancestors — has made restoration a necessity. This in- 
volves the pardon of actual sin and the beginning at 
least of recovery from the taint of sin. There is 
no danger of overestimating the greatness of this 
work of restoration. But there is danger of belittling 
the new birth by making restoration its primary and 
sole object. The Master's idea of the new birth is 
not the narrow conception of it as a necessity arising 
from the fall. The sinning man does indeed need 
pardon, and the fallen to be lifted up. But the new 
birth is not purely nor chiefly remedial. The spirit- 
ual is so distinct from the natural or fleshly life that a 
distinct birth into spiritual life must have been a 



108 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

necessity even if the family of Adam had not lapsed 
from primitive nprightness. Recovery is only the 
inferior half, if, indeed, it is proper to speak of it 
as any part of the new birth itself. It is not alluded 
to in the exposition of the new birth by Him who 
grasped it with ])erfect reason. The new birtli 
tnught by him is not a mere restoration — a coming 
back from a life lost, but it is an advance. 

It is worthy of note that the Master lifts his great 
theme above the plane of accidents. His grasp out- 
reaches the boundaries of time and earth. He does 
not say of a fallen man that he must be born again in 
order to his recovery ; but he announces the broad 
principle applicable alike in all worlds, that there is 
notliing in mere nature from which a spiritual life 
can spring. '' That Avliich is born of the flesh is 
flesh ; " and that is all that Witimatelv comes of such 
birth. If we have spiritual life we must also be born 
of the Spirit, for '4hat which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit." 

2. The new birth is birth into a new life. It be- 
longs, therefore, to the original, divine order in hu- 
man development. Its primary object is to deliver 
us from the thralldom of the flesh and introduce us 
into the soul-liberty of the children of God. But this 
is the beginning, not the end. By no means does 
this new birth at once strip a man of the flesh and 
take the animal life out of him. That would make 
him a weakling. But it gives him the helps which he 



THE NEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. 109 

needs to enable lilm to keep his body under, and make 
more of it, and to use it to advantage for worthy ends. 
ISTor is the new birth always the beginning of soul- 
liberty. Cornelius and Sanl of Tarsus represent a 
class of conscientious, God-feaj^ing men, who, when 
called to the higher life, bring into it the habit and 
principle of integrity already begun. Then the new^ 
birth does for the loyal soul what you do for a little 
fruit-tree which has sprung up by the way -side, when 
you give it a new birth into the soil and culture of 
the garden — puts it under the best conditions of com- 
plete development. 

3. The new birth enfranchises as well as emanci- 
pates. It does not set a man free from old bonds and 
leave him in his weakness to take care of himself. It 
is not a jail delivery. It is the promotion of the 
child of Adam to the freedom and the rights of a son 
and a citizen in the kingdom of God. It is the birth 
in his heart of a new love — the love of a child for a 
parent, which, if he give room for its enthronement, 
will make it his supreme delight to do the will of 
God. 

WHAT THE MAN HIMSELF HAS TO DO IX HIS NEW BIRTH. 

Freedom in loyal exercise is an essential factor in 
the new birth. Eminent is the work of God in the 
great change ; but the man himself is never passive. 
By the grandest conceivable choice each individual 
whose life amounts to anv thin::: for himself takes 



no THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTI2VNITY. 

liold upon God and struggles into the new life and 
liberty of a child of God. What God does for hiin 
is his own opportunity to do something for himself 
— to take a great probational step in the formation of 
a character of moral worthiness, possibly to achieve 
the great victory of his life. His birth into spiritual 
union w^th God is conditioned on the right use of 
his absolute freedom as an elector — his surrender of 
self, his choice of God's w^ill as his will, and his per- 
sonal acceptance of Christ as his Saviour and his 
Master. 

Just how these conditions are modified in form in 
the case of the heathen is an unanswered question. 
That the adjustment for all men of requirement to 
ability is perfect we have assurance in the character 
of God. The essential principle that all advances 
Godward are on the man's part free choices holds 
equally in the case of the heathen with but one talent, 
who knows God only as he hears him in his con- 
science, as with the more liberally endowed who have 
their probation under Christian conditions. 

The probational effect on man's own action in con- 
nection with his admittance to the new life is doubt- 
less greater in some cases tlian in others. Certainly 
it is never the whole test of probation. But under 
Christian training it is the turning-point in acquiring 
the habit of obedience, and it always establishes in 
a degree the probability of a true and successful life. 

The conclusion we have reached, that for the higher 



THE XEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. m 

freedom, which involves self-control, we are depend- 
ent on the woi'k of the Spirit in the conscience, in 
the awakening of conviction, and in the begetting 
within ns of a new life, shows most clearly — 

THE NECESSITY AND REASONABLENESS OF THE NEW BIRTH. 

How many still marvel at the claim of the great 
Teacher — '' Ye must be born anew." The new birth 
is the very doctrine to which skepticism first of all 
objects as unreasonable. Half-believers still ask, 
" How can these things be ? " and are prone to reverse 
the true order of religious thought, and bewilder their 
owm minds by trying to grasp the '^ heavenly things " 
before they have entered into the kingdom of heaven 
by the gate-way of the new birth. They are like 
students who think to discuss the higher problems of 
astronomy which concern the weight and distances 
and motions of planets and suns before they have 
learned the definitions of mathematical terms. If we 
observe the Master's order — begin with first princi- 
ples, enter the primary school of Christ by the new 
birth — we shall see and know for ourselves that this is 
the pathway of reason. 

It must be admitted that the doctrine of tlie new 
birth is often put to disadvantage by unreasonable 
interpretations. Strangely enough, we have a class of 
very orthodox religious teachers who accept the new 
birth without question, and yet from fondness for the 
marvelous load the doctrine with burdens of their own 



112 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

creation, and so lay stumbling-blocks in the way of 
reasoning minds and unconsciously make themselves 
allies with those who reject the doctrine as unreason- 
able. Thus some speak of the new birth as though it 
were a constitutional change, and many seem to re- 
gard it as a substitute for the work of probation, and 
in itself a complete preparation of the soul for heaven, 
half justifying the cliarge of our critics tliat we make 
tlie new birth a short and easy way by which indolent 
souls may dodge into lieaven. Often, as we have 
noticed, in contradiction of tlie radical idea of the 
new birtli, it is narrowed and perverted into a mere 
expedient for the restoration of the fallen sinner, or 
unnaturally confounded with his pardon. 

The new birth is indeed a great change. But, as 
has been shown, it does no violence to human nat- 
ure. Though more than natural, it is not unnatural. 
It is natural in a higher sense in which the natural 
includes the spiritual. It is in nature's own order of 
God ward development. God made man to be his 
child ; but it is not reason that the birth of the flesli 
should be expected to introduce him into child-rela- 
tionsliip to God any more than that it should do the 
same for the inferior animals. To make him con- 
sciously a child of God he must be born of God, and 
hear within him the voice of God welcoming him as 
a child. And this will the more appear as we test our 
conclusion from different points of view. 

Take the new-born infant, innocent indeed, yet 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. II3 

witliout tlionglit and the most helpless thing that 
breathes, and let our problem be, How shall he come 
to the consciousness and freedom of a child of God ? 
Evidently, he must grow, be developed, nurtured, 
trained, instructed. But is it reasonable to look for 
such enlargement by mere processes of education on 
the low plane of being upon which his fleslily birth 
has placed him ? Rather is not just such a change 
of position and relation as the new birth accomplishes 
— an uplift into a new soul-life — an obvious demand 
of man's full development ? Education may draw out 
what there is in the child of the flesh. It may develop 
the facullies of body and mind, and growth m^aj^ 
mature and make the most of them ; but education 
finds in the natural man no germ of a higher life to 
be developed. Obviously, the capacities inherited by 
natural birth, noble as thej^ are, suflicient to place 
man far above the other tribes of earth, cannot by 
mere development exalt him to the freedom of a 
child of God. ITor, it may be added, does the office 
of the Spirit in the conscience so complement these 
primal endowments as fully to meet this great de- 
mand. A conscience in which God speaks, as already 
noticed, can do much for man to make him a wortliy 
fellow-being in all his human relations. It leads him 
toward the kingdom of God, and may bring him near 
to it ; but to enter into it and become a son and a cit- 
izen he must be born of God into the higher life of 
tlie kingdom. 



114 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Eegard man simply as a creature — the finest piece 
of meclianism from tlie hand of God with which we 
are acquainted, and answer the question, How shall 
this creature become a free man, witli power to say 
"1^0 " to appetite and "Yes" to God, power to sub- 
ject the animal to the spiritual? Do we need a book, 
a teacher, or a syllogism to sliow us the absurdity of 
the notion that a creature has been set up by its maker 
as an independent actor ? The fallacy of a self-acting 
machine whicli tliis notion would make man is so ob- 
vious as to offer no occasion for our logic in its expos- 
ure. There is and can be but one independent Actor. 

Start with the doctrine of an infinite personal God 
as the great want of the soul of man which stands out 
so prominent in even the earliest inspirations of which 
we have record, and at once the question faces us, 
IIow shall this great want be met, and this great idea 
become real to man ? Not, surely, by the natural 
senses as we apprehend material things, nor by re- 
search and thought as we try the problems of science. 
The spiritual must be spiritually discerned. How 
futile all attempts to climb to this height by logical 
processes ! l^ot by chemical analysis, not by aid of 
telescope or microscope, not by any revelations of 
science, not by wing of angel, not even by the study 
of the inspired word may a man hope to find the God 
of spiritual life to him. Abundant, bewildering evi- 
dences he may see on every hand of inscrutable intel- 
ligence and power — one God or gods many. But what 



THE NEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. 115 

can God be to the soul tliat knows not God ? And 
liow can tlie soul know God but by birth into the con- 
sciousness and love of God? To find God we must 
be born of God and come into oneness of heart 
with God. 

Consider the ideal of character which the word has 
revealed to us — holiness. Holiness is more than 
innocence. The lily and the rose are innocent. The 
birds and the lambs are innocent. So are the grub 
and the serpent innocent of moral obliquity. All 
are innocent because incapable of sin, and because in- 
capable of sin incapable also of holiness, just as man 
would be completely under the law of necessity and 
the dominion of appetite, all earthy, were no higher 
life possible than that upon wliich he enters by natu- 
ral birth. Does any one imagine that the child of 
Adam can of his own will-power rise up out of soul- 
bondage into soul-liberty and put on holiness as an 
attribute of character ? Need it be said that the very 
conception of holiness waits the dawn of spiritual life 
in the new birth ? 

In harmony with the doctrine of the new birth as a 
necessity of development, it may be added, are nu- 
merous suggestive analogies in all the kingdoms of 
life. Every thing that lives has its birth-time, pre- 
ceded, as we have noticed, by an embryo life ; and in 
many cases this is followed in the process of matur- 
ing by successive transformations or new births. The 
choicer trees and plants in our gardens began life in 



116 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the nursery, and have attained their present fine de- 
velopment and fruitfulness by planting and trans- 
plantings and grafting, each time into the conditions 
of a larger life. Then in the annual resurrection of 
the tree from the sleep of winter first appears the 
folded bud, next the bud opens into the leaf or blos- 
som-cluster, and from the blossom springs the little 
green, insipid thing which, in its time, ripens into the 
luscious fruit. In every spring-time the life of field 
and forest that through the cold winter had seemed 
in the embrace of death is born anew into thrift and 
beauty and fragrance. With the rising of each day 
a slumbering world is boi'ii into renewed life and con- 
sciousness. These analogies, it is true, are but hints. 
"We could never learn from these alone that we have 
need to be born anew from above. But in the light 
which this great truth sheds upon them they are seen 
to point toward it and to find in it their prophecies 
interpreted. 

The analogy holds, too, in the universal law by 
which substantial gain is conditioned upon endeavor. 
The fact that we have each something to do even in 
the new birth itself, as well as in maintaining and per- 
fecting the new life, accords with experience on the 
lower planes of life. In his very birth the infant 
struggles into his new freedom. From the first there 
is little of permanent value that comes to us without 
labor on our part. 'No man was ever born into the 
possession of great intellectual treasures. Every man 



THE XEW BIRTH IXTO FREEDOM. 117 

lias to take liold of knowledge and wisdom for liini- 
self, and he lias to begin with alphabets. So mnst 
eacli man for himself by his own earnest choice of 
God's will, in surrender of self, lay hold on eternal 
life. The power thus to choose is the one God-given 
talent upon the wise use of which depend the ten tal- 
ents of perfected soul-liberty. 

Thus from every point of view does the Christian 
doctrine of the new birth commend itself as reasonable. 
Reason challenges tlie objector to point out any other 
possible way to the higher life and f i-eedom of the sons 
of God. '' JMarvel not that I said unto thee. Ye must be 
born anew," is the protest of reason against unreason. 

A KEY TO TWO DIFFICULT PROBLEMS. 

The two problems are the spiritual condition and 
needs of children and salvation for the heathen; and 
the key to the solution of both is the Christian doctrine 
set forth in this article that the work of the Spirit in 
man is constructive as well as reconstructiye, demand- 
ing for man a new birth into a higher life than could pos- 
sibly come to him by natural birth inheritance, as well 
as recovery from his la]3se into sin. The office of the 
Spirit from the early call of man to the trust of moral 
agency to his birth into a Christian consciousness and 
his perfection in Christian character is that of a lib- 
erator, both from the natural bondage of the flesh and 
from the spiritual bondage of sin. 

The two problems are kindred. The heathen, even 



118 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

after they come to accountability, by iio fault of theirs 
remain but children in spiritual development. The 
trust of conscience enlightened by the Spirit in small 
degree they may have. The higher call of the Spirit 
to a distinctively Christian experience, as a rule, 
tliey seem to hear only as it attends the mission of the 
Christian worker. 

Happily, it is not to-day a question whether the 
religious needs of infants living or dying are provided 
for in the gospel plan, nor whether it is possible for 
those living and dying in heathendom to be saved. In 
the increasing light of truth the strange unfaith of the 
Church upon these questions has of late been rapidly 
disappearing. Christians of all names seem to have 
come generally to agree that the Son of God claims 
dying infants as his, and that his grace attends the 
work of the faithful parent for the religious culture 
of the children spared to him ; also that it is somehow 
possible for even a heathen to secure the favor of 
God. But what the Christian salvation actually does 
for children of irresponsible development, or what 
they need to have done for them, and how the heathen 
can be saved, are questions upon which it is fair to say 
that the faith of the Church is generally vague, unset- 
tled, and unsatisfactory. 

1. Condition and Weeds of Children. — As to chil- 
dren, ^^They are born regenerate," answer some, ^'by 
the unconditional provisions of redemption, and have, 
therefore, no need to be born again till they fall away 



THE XEW BIRTH IXTO FPvEEDOM. 119 

by personal transgression." "Tliey are regenerated 
on the condition of the parent's faith as symbolized in 
their baptism," say others. But what is meant by the 
word '' regenerate " as here used is not clear, and evi- 
dence is wanting that any such change as a spiritual 
regeneration takes place either at the birth or at the 
baj)tism of infants. What capacity for a spiritual life 
has tlie new-born infant ? it is proper to ask. But we 
must not overlook the measure of trutli these theories 
contain. '''The free gift came npon all men unto jus- 
tification of life" is the Magna Charta nnder which 
children are born and live through the years, few or 
many, of irresponsibility and incapacity for the per- 
sonal acceptance of Christ. Doubtless, too, the faith 
of the faithful parent is the w^ise condition of the vit- 
alizing and quickening agency of the Spirit in the 
child. Moreover, the solenni offering up of tlie living 
child in baptism, as iibraham offered the living Isaac, 
puts both parent and child in righ.t relation to God, 
and so meets the condition of best success in the work 
of Christian nurture. 

Others quote, as though that covered the whole 
ground, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
Gloriously true of all infants living or dying. But 
tliat does not constitute the little ones at their birth 
into natural life full citizens of the kingdom of God, 
any more than American birth promotes a child at once 
to the disunities of a voter and a ruler. Full Ameri- 
can citizenship has properly other conditions — certain 



120 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

age and development and the voluntary acceptance of 
its responsibilities. To be of the kingdom of God in 
infancy is to be citizens in prospect upon conditions 
yet to be met. It does not project the child at once 
into sainthood and so supersede the necessity of Chris- 
tian nurture and the new birth. 

" Children become regenerate by the gradual work- 
ing of saving grace through the appliances of religious 
education," others teach. In this statement, too, 
there is truth as well as error. Education is a means 
of Christianizing not sufficiently recognized. Beyond 
a doubt the Spirit works in the child as a vitalizing 
agency in connection with the work of the Christian 
parent and teacher, and why, it may be asked, might 
not this amount in the end to the child's regeneration ? 
For the two good reasons that tlie irresponsible child 
has not yet the capacity for spiritual personality, and 
that when he has grown to such capacity he comes 
under a condition to be met by his own choice. The 
Spirit calls him to the new life, not compels him. 
Ho attains to the freedom of a child of God by the 
riglit exercise of the freedom of an elector which the 
call of the Spirit offers to him, or, if the reader please, 
confers upon him. Offers is perhaps the truer word, 
for when the child of the flesh neglects the opportu- 
nity the Spirit's call gives him lie remains a bond- 
man to the flesh. 

Christian nurture as an agency of the Spirit may 
bring the child of Adam to the point of birth into tlie 



THE XEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 121 

consciousness of freeclon) as a child of God. It may 
do for him all that he needs to have done, all which 
in the nature of the case can be done in his present 
stage of development : it may beget in him a child's 
faith and a child's love. But beyond this, when he 
lias become capable of choosing for himself, upon his 
own personal acceptance of Christ must come the 
marked change urged with such distinctness and em- 
phasis as a universal necessity : " Ye must be born 
anew." By his own choice of Christ as his Master 
he comes into a new^ relation to him not otherwise 
possible, and then first becomes possible to him the new 
and higher consciousness of divine approval. Here, 
surely, culminates his full adoption as a child into the 
household of God. He has personally chosen Christ 
in denial of self, and through him has attained to tlio 
new joy and freedom of sonship, according to the 
word : " As many as received him, to them gave he 
power to become the sons of God, even to them that 
believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, 
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God " 

In this view we see that from the first such religious 
needs as children have are fully provided for. '' Of 
such is the kingdom " is the divine warrant to us to 
count them in at their birth and enroll them w^hen we 
name them. "We read of some who were sanctified from 
the womb. That doubtless means sacredly set apart 
for holy service by the oflPering of the parent as well 



122 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

as by divine appointment. It is tlie Lord's way that 
every home should be a part of the kingdom of 
heaven, and that every child born into it should from 
the first breathe the vitalizing element of the new life ; 
yea, that every infant child should in the very germ 
of his being be consecrated to God. But if the Lord's 
way were every-where man's way, not the less would 
it be true that every child of the flesh, to become a 
child of God, must be born anew from above. 

2. Salvation for the Heathen. — It is a just expecta- 
tion of reason and a demand of justice that all who 
are held responsible should have a fair and equal 
opportunity to secure the divine approval. Precisely 
this a perfect redemption, a perfect providence, and 
the help of an omnipotent Spirit assure to all. To the 
heathen less is given, and of them, proportionately, 
less is required. By no means does this doctrine solve 
all the mysteries of the hereafter. The future is God's, 
and it is safe to trust it with him. Enough for us to 
know that in the present life w^e are equally able to do 
that which is asked of us. In heathendom, as in Chris- 
tendom, the inhabitants are of two classes — those who 
are held to the responsibilities of probation and those 
who are not, the latter including not only infants, but, 
as Wliedon supposes, many others not of sufficient de- 
velopment for this high trust. In the heathen world 
doubtless the latter class is much larger proportionately 
than in Christendom. 

Our doctrine of the freedom of moral agency is not 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 123 

that it is a natural endowment, nor that it is an acci- 
dent of life. It depends on the call and inspiration of 
the Spirit. Assurance have we in this that the call is 
always timely and fair; never a call to hard conditions 
and needless perils. Those who have but the con- 
science of children are treated as children, whether in 
stature babes or men. Those who hear in their 
consciences, and there only, the voice of God find in 
that very voice the needed inspiration of freedom to 
obey it and w^in conscious approval. If in extraordi- 
nary cases, even w^ithout a knowledge of Christ, comes 
the call of the Spirit to a religious life, w^ith the 
call comes also increased responsibility and the needed 
help. The yet liigher call of the Spirit to the new life 
and freedom of the sons of Grod which attends the 
gospel message enlarges the area of freedom, but is no 
basis of probability as to its exercise. God is not a 
hard master to require that which he has not bestowed. 
The setting sun never ends a day in which the chil- 
dren of men have not all equal ability to meet the 
requirements of the great Father. No to-morrow or 
other world is demanded to right any wrongs in God's 
administration now and here. 

Surely all w^ho are called to the responsibilities of 
probation are equally able to meet its requirements of 
them. Christian faith, of course, is not demanded of 
those who have not been fairly reached by Christian 
agencies. True, a personal acceptance of Christ is a 
probational step they have no opportunity to take, but 



124 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by persistent integrity to their convictions they may 
do that which will prove in effect its full probational 
equivalent. It is of no account in comparison that 
it does not bring them at once into the full joy of a 
Christian experience. 

The call of God to the new life, we must not forget, 
comes, at least as a rule, in connection with the preach- 
ing; of the word. In the heathen world we have little 
or no evidence of any other call of God to man than 
in his conscience. Nor is there any reason in the 
notion of some that the higher call of the Spirit comes 
alike to all persons even in nominal Christendom. 
The same message through which the Spirit comes to 
one with saving power may be too crude, or too refined, 
or too mixed with error to be the medium of grace to 
another. All truly conscientious persons God knows 
as such, and he is well pleased with them ; but they 
are not all Christians in name nor in spiritual develop- 
ment. Of those who in all sincerity bear the Chris- 
tian name evidently the majority are yet in the dawn 
of a Christian consciousness. But all who are true to 
the light given them are faced toward the rising sun, 
and the perfect light of Christian day is before them. 

Doubtless there are good men to whom Christ 
l)as not yet been revealed in his glory as a life-giving 
Saviour — many who have but the light of a perverted 
or beclouded Christianity, or who have not even 
heard of Christ, but whom he knows well^ and to 
whom, when they find him, he will not seem a 



THE NEW BIRTH INTO FREEDOM. 125 

stranger. Are tliey Christians? Not probably in the 
conscioiisiies.s of child-relation si dp to God. Have they 
been born anew ? Not probably into conscious spirit- 
ual union with God. They may be vague in their 
notions of God? Have they become freemen? Not 
in the high sense of the Master — " If the Son make 
you free, ye shall be free indeed." Yet the day of 
their freedom has dawned. They belong to Christ. 
They are of his ungathered people — the '^ other sheep" 
whom he claims as his though they have not yet heard 
his voice. They are Christians as morning twilight is 
day. May not the exit of such from earth into the 
liglit and joy of his presence be their new birth into 
the full liberty of the children of God ? 



VII. 

EQUALITY IN PROBATION A POSTULATE OF FAITH. 



OUTLINE. 



The One Question. 

The Prevailing Unfaith. 

Equality not Apparent upon the Surface. 

The Equation of Endowment and Requirement. 



EQUALITY IN PROBATION A POSTULATE OF FAITH. 



THE ONE QUESTION. 

The probation of all men equal in opportunity for 
securing the favor of God and eternal life. No one 
found on tlie left hand on the great day of awards 
able to say of any one on the right hand, " If I had 
had his probation and he mine I should now take his 
crown and he would suffer my doom." The require- 
ments of probation adjusted to each individual case, 
so that by change of birth and providential environ- 
ments during the trial-life the final destiny of no one 
would be reversed. On the vital question of divine 
approval or condemnation every man's probation just 
as good as every otlier mean's, and the best that a pro- 
bation for eternal life admits. 

THE PREVAILING UNFAITH. 

Did Christian ever doubt that ? Strange that a 
behever in the divine Father of all men can doubt 
that essential equality in his treatment of all runs as 
a golden rule through the entire system of his grace 
and providence. Strange that doubt should ever ques- 
tion a faith so reasonable and scriptural. Stranger 
still that faith seems rarely to have risen to the con- 
ception of actual equality in probation. Infinite in- 



130 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

equality has been and is the prevailing unfaith of 
Christians of all names, save only those who look for 
final salvation for all men. 

EQUALITY NOT APPARENT UPON THE SURFACE. 

But equality surely is not apparent on the surface 
of life in this world. Let it be admitted once for all 
that in actual present opportunity for moral develop- 
ment and the attainment of worthy character, as well 
as in the distribution of material good, there is great 
inequality. It is not to be denied that this inequality 
comes in part from the plan of God in the lives of 
men. There is a Cliristian doctrine of election, but 
it is not arbitrary. God elects to spiritual life and 
child-relationship to himself tliose who elect to do his 
will. He has also in his plans for us due regard for 
conditions not in our control. But upon these we may 
with assurance affirm that he never suspends, nor suf- 
fers to be suspended, eternal destinies. It is a fact 
clearly recognized in Scripture that the heavenly Fa- 
ther is now doing for some men what he is not now 
doing for others. But there is the same inequality 
in what he requires of us. That lie holds all men to 
the responsibilities of probation we have no right to 
assume. Probation -comes not by necessary sequence 
in the order of natural development. Man has moral 
accountability only to the extent that he is called of 
God to this high trust. God is constantly doing for 
us all just what we need to enable us to meet his 



EQUALITY IN PROBATION. 131 

present requirements of us. An earthly parent wisely 
provides for an elder son whom he elects to send upon 
a great mission that which might not be to the ad- 
vantage of a younger son yet in the preparatory 
school. So the gifts of the divine Fatlier are all fit 
and timely — milk for babes, meat for strong men, 
armor for soldiers. At first he treats us all as babes — 
does every thing for us, asks nothing of us. If there 
be, as Dr. D. D. Whedon supposes, in nominal Chris- 
tendom as well as in geographical heathendom a vast 
multitude who, because not reached by Ohristianizino^ 
agencies, remain to the end in the " infantile, unde- 
veloped dispensation," and are saved as infants, what 
is that to us ? Enough that when tlie opportunities 
of probation come to us, then come all needed helps. 

THE EQUATION OF ENDO^VIVIENT AND EEQCTKEMENT. 

Nothing is assumed as to those dying in infancy 
and others who do not here attain to accountable de- 
velopment. But for those who are treated as proba- 
tioners it is assumed as a basis truth that they have 
their probation by the call and under the administra- 
tion of the one God, the Father Almighty, all-wise, 
all-good, who is never arbitrary, but always true to 
himself and his creation. It follows by moral neces- 
sity that in the probation given to us we have in per- 
fection the continued equation of freedom and ability, 
of ability and duty, and hence of probation and essen- 
tial equality. 



VIII. 

THE TENDENCY OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 



OUTLINE. 



The Trend Faithward. 

The Premises which Lead to Equality. 

The Revival and Missionary Movement. 

Lead of the Methodist Fathers. 

Arminianism and Calvinism. 

Whedon's Chapter on the " Equation of Probational 

Advantages." 
The Goal of Faith. 



THE TENDENCY OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 



THE TREND FxVTTHWARD. 

XoT yet has the goal of faith as to the advantages 
of probation been reached. Bnt from the time when 
the Reformation by the strong hand of Luther brought 
out the Bible from the cloister and put it into the 
hands of the people the trend of Christian thought 
has been faithward. Even Calvin's doctrine of elec- 
tion was a great advance from the faith of Romanism, 
both in the nobler salvation which it taught and in 
the broader faith which it inspired. Moreover, in ex- 
alting the sovereignty of God above popes aiid kings 
the Genevan master proclaimed the true liberty of 
faith, in the legitimate exercise of which his follow- 
ers have grown into a larger freedom than his phi- 
losophy admitted. 

The idea of probation as a basis truth of Christian- 
ity has but recently come into prominence, and the 
doctrine has not yet found its undisputed place in 
Christian theology. It has come with the outgoing 
of the dogma of unconditional election and reproba- 
tion, and at the same time as tlie conclusive answer 
and the only answer to universalism. But the change 
has come gradually ; and how much is involved in tho 



136 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHPJSTIAXITY. 

great truth of human probation is a question which 
has not yet been fully considered. 

THE PREMISES WHICH LEAD TO EQUALITY. 

Arniinius, three centuries ago, gave clear statement 
to the premises which lead to equality in the dealings 
of God with men, and his disciples from the first took 
hold strongly of the foundation truths which he had 
made prominent, of universal redemption and regen- 
erating grace, free alike to all on the condition of its 
acceptance. But neither Arminins nor his earlier fol- 
lowers brought into the foreground the co-ordinate 
truth that the new birth is the beginning rather than 
the end of a successful life. It has been by slow ad- 
vances tliat the whole of the present life has come to 
be seen to be, in its original and changeless purpose, 
a school of probation, into the real work of which the 
new birth is initiatory. The notion, yet vaguely held 
by some, widely prevailed among the early Arminians, 
as well as Calvinists, that conversion alone completed 
the work of preparation for the life of heaven. 

It was Butler rather than Arminius who first gained 
the attention of the Christian world to probation as a 
great Christian doctrine. Butler's conception of pro- 
bation was not one of absolute equality, but his 
Analogy of Religion leads in the direction of equality, 
and, as a text-book in the education of five generations 
of Christian teachers, has, probably, more than any 
other human work helped to establish the faith of 



TENDENCY OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 137 

Cliristendom in tlie reasonableness and the benevolence 
of Immaii probation. 

THE REVIVAL AND MISSIONARY MOVEMENT. 

The change to better conceptions of God and man 
gained much impetus in the revival movement under 
the lead of Wesley, "Whitefield, and Edwards, and much 
more when the revival broadened and deepened into 
the great modern missionary enterprise for tlie conver- 
sion of the world. The life-w^ork of Wesley and his 
successors has been to emphasize the doctrines of free- 
dom and accoiintabihty in man and of universal redemp- 
tion througli Christ, and on the firm footing thus af- 
forded tliem to preach witli the power of assured faitli 
the glad tidings of a perfect salvation free alike to all. 

LEAD OF THE METHODIST FATHERS. 

The vantage-ground of this inspiring faith made the 
Methodist fathers leaders in the great reformation which 
has spread widely over two continents and has helped 
to dot the world with mission stations. Their critics 
had no answer but that the Methodists were better 
believers and preachers than philosophers. Both the 
compliment and the criticism were just. The itin- 
erants were busy and successful and confident in the 
work of their calling, and, like other unanswered men 
of earnest purpose, not always careful to look to the 
philosophy underlying their appeals nor quick to per- 
ceive how much was involved in their premises and 
to take in the broader prospect before them. 



138 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ARMINIANISM AND CALVINISM. 

The truth is, between Arminianism and Calvinisra, 
neither has had any thing to boast of in the way of 
philosophy. The burden upon Calvinism has always 
been a philosophy which had to be explained away, 
while it has been the weakness of the Arminians that, 
in the absence of a philosophy of their own, they have 
unconsciously made concessions to the very philosophy 
under which the Calvinists labored. It is the revival 
of Christian thought, as one of the frnits of the great 
spiritual reform, which is bringing relief to faith by 
eliminating the dogma of necessity from Christian 
theology. 

The godly pastors of the Calvinistic Churches early 
began to see that freedom of moral agency, universal 
atonement, and free salvation for all men gave the 
messenger of Christ his true position, and they were 
not slow to make this their pulpit stand-point and put 
themselves abreast with their Arminian neighbors in 
evangelistic work. In the theological lecture-room 
they interpreted the free Gospel of the pulpit by their 
old philosophy, modified, indeed, in form, but in essen- 
tials unchanged. The pulpit stand-point, explained 
they, gives the manward view of religious truth. 
Men are free agents, they were ready enough to say, 
just as free as in the nature of the case is possible tc 
dependent beings — free to accept a free salvation if 
they are so inclined. But from God's view all tho 



TENDENCY OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 139 

volitions of men must be in the line of his great plan 
of providential and moral government, and therefore 
fixed by his own purpose. The word '" unconditional " 
had quietly dropped out from the theological nomen- 
clature. God was not arbitrary. He had formed the 
best possible plan, and would save just as many as 
could be saved by the best use of all appropriate 
means. Tlie greatest good of the greatest number 
was the basis law of his plan. But free moral agents, 
they assumed as axiomatic, were governed by motives. 
In the absence of the motives of the Grospel they were 
lost, of course. The more you bring the motives of 
tlie Gospel to bear upon human hearts by preaching 
to them, praying for them, and by Christian givmg 
the more of them would be saved. That was God's 
way of electing men. So reasoned the Calvinists. 
And the Arminians talked in much tlie same way, 
except that they left out the word " elect," discoursed 
less of God's plan, and were generally more hopeful, 
earlier and oftener venturing to suggest that virtuous 
lieathen, if such were found, would in some way be 
saved. 

The Calvinists and the Arminians had come so near 
together as to be chiefly distinguished by their shibbo- 
leths. In tlie view of both the dynamic conception 
that Christians, as God's appointed workers, had the 
eternal destiny of their fellow-men largely in their 
hands had come to the front. Yet both stoutly repu- 
diated the philosophy of necessity which this crude 



140 THK DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

notion involves. Neither liad an}^ conception of the 
only self-consistent doctrine of freedom — absolute 
moral freedom, which, v^ithin its province, lifts tlie 
probationer above all that is accidental to him, and 
thus places the favor of God and eternal life equally 
within the reach of the ill-born, the benighted, the 
Aveak, as of the well-born, the enlightened, the strong. 
Both for many years based their missionary appeals 
chiefly on the ground that the heathen were dropping 
into an endless perdition under the wrath of God, many 
millions every year, whom he would save if Christians 
would carry the Gospel to them. All which is fitly 
summed in the averment, " The heathen have light 
enough to be damned, but not enough to be saved." 
That w^e hear less of that style of appeal now means, 
not so much the conscious giving up of old theories 
as that faith is outgrowing them. The Christian 
world moves. 

"WHEDON ON EQUALITY IN PROBxlTION. 

The conservative leaders of Christian thought to- 
day are probably fairly represented in the careful 
statements of Dr. D. D. Wliedon, in the well-remem- 
bered chapter of his work on the Will bearing the 
expressive title, "Equation of Probational Advan- 
tages." The writer distinguishes three dispensations 
under which the human family are living — "the 
proper Christian dispensation," with its high standard 
of probation ; "the infantile, irresponsible, or unde- 



TENDENCY OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 141 

veloped dispeiisiition, embracing all minds not devel- 
oped to the conditions of moral accountability; and 
the heathen dispensation, embracing all excluded from 
all possible knowledge of Christianity" (page 345). 
He suggests the existence, not in geographical heathen- 
dom alone, but " within the bosom of Christendom, 
of an immense class, adult in years," " whose moral 
and intellectual nature has never attained a develop- 
ment to the level of responsibility," " but apparently 
entitled to the moral immunity of infancy," and also 
of an ^^ invisible Church in heathendom," in whom 
God may discern ^'tlie spirit of faith" "of which 
Christ is the concrete and embodiment." His con- 
clusion is, possible salvation for all, with hope, how- 
ever, for responsible heathen at the vanishing-point. 
My difference with Dr. Whedon is in degree. His 
argument for freedom, it seems to me, pi-oves more 
than he claims, and fully justifies his well-chosen 
plirase, " Equation of Probational Advantages," with- 
out tlie qualification he gives it. 

Tlie tendency to more encouraging views of pro- 
bation has quickened all along the line into a drift of 
the Christian body. The faith of the Church gener- 
ally begins to take hold of the great truth that the God 
we worship is a loving Father, and that he has made 
all men to be his children and. our brethren. It is 
no longer thinkable that our common Father should 
decree for any of these lives of guilt here to be fol- 
lowed by the woe of his wrath forever. Is it any more 



142 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIAXITY. 

reasonable thinking that he should make the question 
of eternal life to depend in the least on the accidents 
of birth and training ? — that he should in any degree 
suspend the eternal destiny of one upon a straw which 
another may break at will ? — that he should appoint 
for the weak conditions of his favor harder than for 
the strong? 

Arminianism has been grafted upon Calvinism so 
near the root as to root itself in the soil and make a 
new tree, root and brancli. And, as often happens in 
the work of grafting, the new tree shows signs of 
superior thrift. Doubtless it needs the faithful use 
of the pruning-knife. There is some danger from 
excessive and unnatural outgrowths. Progressive 
orthodoxy has need of wise leadership to guard it 
against too much speculation on side issues. But, 
whether of Arminian or Calvinian antecedents, let us 
not timidly cry a halt at sight of those lately regarded 
as opponents and of possible new unfoldings of truth 
from our own premises. 

THE GOAL OF FAITH 

on the high, broad, common level of Christian con- 
servatism and progress is before us — absolute free- 
dom upon responsible issues, perfect equality in the 
essentials of probation, and for all the best conditions 
which probation admits. It is time for us to drop 
our word-contentions and go up together and take our 
rightful possession. 



IX. 

THE ONLY GROUND ON WHICH PROBATION CAN 

STAND. 



OUTLINE 



Foundation Principles. 

Identity of Moral Freedom with Probation. 

An Axiom in Ethics. 

Motive and Will. 



THE ONLY GROUND ON WHICH PROBATION CAN STAND. 



FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. 

Obviously a reasonable probation must have as 
foundation principles — in man absolute freedom of 
moral agency, and in God equity in its appointments 
and requirements. These premises logically involve 
essential equality. Inequality of power to keep each 
individual his own trust and secure each for himself 
the favor of God w^ould leave probation no assured 
ground. But, waiving for the moment the absurdity 
of a moral probation on a sliding-scale of infinite 
inequality, can any one fail to see that by such hy- 
pothesis probation, instead of being a blessing, would 
burden faith as a great mystery? ISTotwithstanding 
the hopeful tendency of faith as to the future of 
mankind, less gloomy prospects rather than brighter 
would more fittingly represent the views of the ma- 
jority of even the most hopeful Christian leaders to-day. 
Of the heathen world "only a few among millions 
do accept the essential Christ of conscience," says the 
Rev. Joseph Cook, the able and faithful reporter of 
what he regards as advanced current orthodoxy. For 
the vast majority of the human family, according to 
this, all but certain doom, a million probabilities 

against one ! Call that a fair probation ? 
10 



146 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

From the same reasoning how much more hope 
may we cherish for degraded myriads in lands nom- 
inally Christian? And all these sonls, ushered into 
being and assigned their probation by the heavenly 
Father, all bearing his image, all as precious as our 
own souls and our children's ! How much better this 
than one sweeping decree of damnation for all the 
benighted, ill-born, neglected, blighted sons of earth ? 
Well, a little better where so much is at stake — rather 
a shade less appalling, if only that one chance in a 
million will hold. But it has nothing to hold to; it 
is nothing but a fiction. The thousand like chances 
in the view of more hopeful minds are but a thousand 
zeros with no certain unit to give them value. 

All this reasoning from one's antecedents and en- 
vironments to the success or failure of his probation 
proceeds on the basis of a predestinarian theology or 
a fatalistic philosophy, which alike exclude all control 
of destiny on our part. To judge of one's prospects 
for securing the favor or incurring the frown of 
Heaven from heritage of birth and environing condi- 
tions is to abandon the doctrine of freedom and rea- 
son from necessitarian premises. If you can reason 
about the formation of responsible character from 
such premises, if you can estimate probabilities and 
multiply them by increasing motive appliances favor- 
able or unfavorable, then may the motives be so in- 
creased as to amount in effect to certainty, and the 
notion of probation as completely runs aground as 



THE OXLY GROUND OF PROBATION. 147 

under the rule of avowed predestination. Probation 
finds tenable ground only when cleared of all this 
false philosophizing by which inequality is inferred. 

IDENTITY OF MORAL FREEDOM WITH PROBATION. 

Freedom of moral agency is the root-idea of proba- 
tion. The doctrine of a divine decree of uncondi- 
tional election accepted logically with its consequences, 
equally with that of ultimate salvation for all men, 
excludes probation in any proper sense of the term. 
Both these hypotheses are necessitarian in philosophy, 
and alike make the present life but a preliminary 
course of discipline and training for the formation of 
a predestined character and to a predestined end. 
They both stand in the faith of those who accept 
them squarely on the purpose of God. They are 
both self-consistent, and in their way philosophic. 
They assume that men are uniformly controlled by 
motives, and therefore that their characters are shaped 
and their predestined end is surely reached by the 
providential working of divinely appointed agencies. 
They are both fatally inconsistent in presuming that 
in such a school of necessity any kind of moral char- 
acter is possible. 

The freedom of an accountable agent is the freedom 
of probation, and without the realm of probation has 
no existence and no parallel. It differs radically from 
the freedom of God, who from his immutable perfec- 
tion in moral excellence cannot do wrong ; also from 



148 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tlie freedom of a child of God who has already- 
wrought out his salvation from temptation as a possi- 
bility. It is the very trust the faithful improvement 
of which forever fortifies the soul against sin. Free- 
dom to do wrong is the weakness of an immature 
character yet in probation. This morally elective 
freedom is itself probation under another name, and 
it carries with it as a corollary essential equality. It is 
absurd that a man should be morally responsible be- 
yond the limit of absolute moral freedom, and there- 
fore that the standing of mankind with a just God 
and tlieir equality before him as probationers should 
be affected by circumstances not in their control. 

The freedom of probation places every man on the 
summit of personality before God. That is just say- 
ing that where God holds man accountable he is justly 
accountable ; that his responsible character is his own ; 
that his moral standing; at the bar of reason and eter- 
nal justice depends upon himself alone. 

These statements are but different forms of 

AN AXIOM IN ETHICS, 

which cannot be proved because it is an axiom, and 
once seen to advantage cannot fail to command the 
assent of reason. To reason from one's birth and sur- 
roundings that he will win the favor or bring upon 
himself the displeasure of Heaven is to deny freedom 
in man and justice in God. 

The high freedom of probation, or moral agency. 



THE ONLY GROUND OF PROBATION. 149 

let US remember, is not an accident nor an outgrowtli 
by evolution of the earthy man. It comes down 
from heav^en and is born of God. The call of the 
Spirit to this responsible trust is always timely and 
fair, and is accompanied by adequate helps. The 
patient and persistent in well-doing, Jew and Gentile, 
with just the help from above wliich he needs, each 
for himself wins eternal life. He who persists in 
sin without law other than that written in his heart 
will perish, but not more certainly, as Paul's language 
implies, than he who sins persistently under the law. 
" God is no respecter of persons." Every man's pro- 
bation is appointed for himself alone as truly as 
though there were no other man, and is perfectly ad- 
justed to the conditions of his life, and, therefore, un- 
der an equitable administration must be in essentials 
one of equality with the probation of every other man. 

MOTIVE AND WILL. 

That motive determines the exercise of the will- 
power is self-contradictory. Incentives w^hich appeal 
only to natural inclination do indeed govern the out- 
flows of inclination in human as well as in brute 
activity. But with action on this lower plane motive 
and will, in their proper sense, have nothing to do. 
Will is not a synonym for inclination, nor is motive 
a prompter to inclination. The will-power in man is 
his self-controlling power. Motive in its highest and 
strictest sense is the reason in view" of w^hich man 



150 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

controls his inclination. The office of motives is to 
open to US tlie way and afford ns opportunity for the 
exercise of the will-power. To multiply motives is 
not to overcome freedom, but to enlarge its area ; 
not to disturb the equipoise of probation, but to poise 
larger trusts in its even scales. More light, increase 
of power, wider opportunities, demand in exact pro- 
portion more self-denial, greater vigilance, braver 
work, higher standards of living. It could not be 
otherwise. The law is self-adjusting. Motives come 
by what God puts in the scale of trust, and with 
mathematical precision are balanced by responsibility. 
Motives, freedom, responsibility, character, good or 
bad, as we elect, are ever, and of necessity must be, 
linked in equal ratio. The worst-born probationer of 
Adam's race cannot be and do as the best-born, but 
he can just as easily be and do what the heavenly 
Father requires of him as the condition of his favor. 
If it were possible to conceive under the care of a 
perfect Father the equation of advantages for securing 
his approval to be in the least disturbed, surely it 
would be less unnatural that it should be in favor of 
his weaker child. But even that would be unnatural — 
out of harmony with a freedom that is freedom. 
That equality of power to do what is reasonably re- 
quired of us is involved in accountable freedom is 
inseparable from the greater thought that equality of 
opportunity to secure the divine favor is a demand of 
justice. 



X. 

A DEMAND OF JUSTICE. 



OUTLINE 



Our Ability and Duty to Judge what is Right. 
A Fair Probation, if Any, the Right of Every Man. 
A Question which Reverence Forbids. 
An Absurd Apology. 



A DEMAND OF JUSTICE. 



OUR ABILITY AND DUTY TO JUDGE WHAT IS RIGHT. 

Look at our question in the light of justice, if that 
has not become impossible from the habit of closing 
our eyes and blindly confounding justice with injus- 
tice where the ways of God are concerned, absurdly 
imagining that to be just in God which universal 
reason would condemn as unjust in man. We cannot 
grasp the plans of the Infinite One and trace the 
rectitude of his administration in all its lines and con- 
nections. But there are simple questions in equity 
upon which every man who has intelligence enough 
to be accountable is capable of judging, and just as 
capable as Paul or Gabriel ; and one of the duties of 
our probation is with courage and candor to exercise 
our judgment upon such questions. The Just One 
calls on us to judge even of his own administration : 
" Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ? " 
" Judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard. 
What more could have been done to my vineyard 
that I have not done in it ? " " Will not the Jud^re 
of all the earth do right ? " " Are not my ways 
equal?" Tliese emphatic interrogatives carry the 
assumption of a clear case with no occasion for aro^u- 



154 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

meiit or room for reasonable doubt. Love, reverence, 
worship, imply our approving judgment upon the 
ways of God so far as they are within our apprehension. 
"The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice," means 
that we know wliat justice is, and that we know 
enough of God to assure us that his is a throne of 
justice. What is justice but a disposition and a pur- 
pose to respect the rights of all, and to award to every 
one approval or disapproval in impartial regard to his 
deserts ? 

A FAIR PROBATION, IF ANY, THE RIGHT OF EVERY MAN. 

Surely a fair probation, if any, is the right of all 
men, and of every man equally with every other man 
— a probation under conditions from which reason 
cannot infer the probability of failure ; a probation 
involving no needless risks ; a probation the final 
issue of which to no man depends in any degree upon 
other men, but which to every man lies between him- 
self and his Maker as exclusively as though there were 
no other created intelligence. 

Does not simple justice in God demand essential 
equality in the probation he gives to men alike re- 
lated to him and having at stake like interests ? If 
the reader hesitate it is pertinent to ask if, leaving 
man for the moment out of the account, impartiality 
is not a debt which justice owes to itself. If a father 
could persuade himself that a son to whom he had 
made the conditions of his favor many times harder 



A DEMAND OF JUSTICE. 155 

than to another son had no right to complain of disin- 
heritance because it was just possible for him to meet 
these harder conditions, yet how would such a father 
answer to himself in the court of his own breast? 
What must be his judgment upon his own conduct? 
"What must his children think of him ? What would 
the heavenly Father say to such an earthly father? 
Would not the banishment of the unfortunate son be 
in the eyes of earth and heaven, as well as at the bar 
of his own conscience, the condemnation of the un- 
natural parent ? 

A QUESTION WHICH EEVEEENCE FOKBIDS. 

Reverence for the great Father should forbid us to 
ask if it be possible for him to cast away from the 
glory of his presence any ilhborn child of his great 
family who with the probationary advantages of an- 
other might have won his favor. But it is not irrev- 
erent to affirm that any parent would be unjust who 
should punish one of his own children with eternal 
displeasure^and banishment for failures which reason 
could but deem probable from the blight under which 
lie permitted him to be born. 

Justice holds even scales and condemns all real in- 
equality. It does not object to differences in capacity 
and diversity of gifts, nor to variety in circumstances ; 
but it does demand that all these be taken duly into 
the account in the requirements of our probation, so 
that on the one question of opportunity to secure the 



156 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

favor of God we all stand as equals. Justice demands 
in tlie trials of our probation tlie best conditions that 
probation admits, and therefore for all equality. The 
best is the simply fair and just. The perfect fairness 
of God's dealings with men is one of the essentials of 
his rightful supremacy over them. 

AN ABSURD APOLOGY. 

But equality must begin with probation or there 
can be no equality. Christian thought has so far 
advanced as to admit the demand of justice for an ad- 
ministration on some basis of impartiality, and it offers 
as an apology for the supposed inequality in probation 
a scaling down of punishment to comparatively few 
stripes for those who fail under hard conditions. If 
to any reader this expedient may seem plausible a 
simple illustration will expose its shallowness. 

A father offers rewards to his ten sons conditioned 
on their reaching a fixed standard of excellence in 
prescribed courses of study, with the understanding 
that such as fail are to be punished with stripes and 
banishment. The stronger five he places under fa- 
vorable conditions — provides for them approved text- 
books, attractive surroundings, and good teachers to 
instruct and guide them, and hold up to them the 
inspiring reward. lie does for tliem all tliat a 
thoughtful and generous father of abundant means 
can do, and asks of them only that which must be 
done, if done at all, by them. 



A DEMAND OF JUSTICE. 157 

The weaker five lie leaves pretty much to them- 
selves — to study, if they please, and to get books and 
instruction as they may, with but tlie vaguest notion 
of the consequences to them of neglect. Every one 
knowing their circumstances looks for failure. They 
are under conditions immeasurably less favorable than 
the other sons. Indeed, there is nothing favorable in 
their case. Every thing is against them. They fail 
almost of course, and come at the father's bidding to 
receive their stripes. 

So far there is no pretense of equality. Can any 
one persuade himself that all that is necessary to im- 
partial justice is to give more and harder stripes to a 
reprobate of the favored five whose failure is solely 
his own fault, and fewer and lighter stripes to the 
five unfortunates whose failure was made probable 
by hard conditions, while both alike are sent into 
hopeless banishment ? Where in earth or heaven or 
hell is the conscience that will not pronounce such an 
absurd pretense at balancing up the scales of justice 
at the whipping-post as infamous ? 

That style of equalizing begins at the wrong end, 
and is simple injustice in thin disguise. If it satisfies 
any theologizer driven to the wall it could do nothing 
for the wretched myriads supposed to be found among 
the doomed at the judgment, who with the probation 
of any in the ranks of the saved might have been 
sharers with them in crowns of life. It would not 
even silence the unhappy victims. If any poor soul 



158 THE DExMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

on the left hand could point to any shining saint on 
the right and truthfully say, " By change in the con- 
ditions of our probation I should have been in his 
place and he would have been in mine," justice would 
give him a tongue which would reach the approving 
ear of the King on the throne of the universe and 
secure either a reversal of awards or for both a new 
trial. This weak dodge of a narrow theology needs 
but to be exposed. The remedy it calls for is not 
logic, but more and a better faith. If there be equal- 
ity in the dealings of God with men, as assuredly 
there is, it must begin with probation itself, and be 
the unvarying rule in every day of life. 



XL 

THE BASIS OF RESPONSIBLE CHARACTER. 



OUTLINE. 



Every Man's Responsible Character his Own Work. 
Sin and Holiness Postulates of Freedom. 
Objections Answered. 
Sin without Excuse. 



THE BASIS OF RESPONSIBLE CHARACTER. 



EVEKY man's responsible CHARACTER HIS OWN WORK. 

Character in a man, which God approves or con- 
demns as praiseworthy or blameworthy, is unquah- 
fiedly liis own work. Plainly, whatever moral law, 
no less than natural law, clearly teaches should be 
accepted with unhesitating faith. Given the exclu- 
sive reign of natural law, and there is no room for 
freedom or character, except as the words are used in 
irresponsible senses. Given moral law, with account- 
ability and its inseparable freedom of choice upon moral 
issues, and praiseworthy and blameworthy character 
are two equal possibilities. Freedom being a fact, sin 
is not a mystery any more than holiness is a mystery. 

SIN AND HOLINESS ARE ALIKE POSTULATES OF FREEDOM. 

Of course, we use the word sin in its strict sense as 
involving personal culpability, not in the broad sense 
in which it is made to include such irresponsible 
aberrations as Heaven pities rather than blames. When 
the God-given opportunity of this higher freedom 
comes it must be either loyally improved or culpably 
neglected. The choice between holiness and sin be- 
comes a moral necessity. ISTo man can take a neutral 
11 



162 THE DEMOCRACY OF CIIRISTIAXITY. 

moral attitude any more than he can will himself out 
of being. 

That eacli man's responsible character nmst be de- 
termined by himself is a moral axiom, and accords 
with the universal convictions of mankind. Doubt- 
less we all mistake in our moral judgment of ourselves 
and of others. But there cannot be mistake in the 
universal acceptance of the primary truth that every- 
wliere freedom and responsibility are in equal ratio. 
Nor can any thing be surer than that every-where 
reason must approve what is seen to be morally riglit 
and condemn what is seen to be morally wrong. Need 
it be added tliat this is the ground on whicli tlie in- 
spired volume appeals to the consciences of men, in 
every word of command, exhortation, entreaty, warn- 
ing, threatening, encouragement, promise? It is true 
salvation from earthiness to heavenly-mindedness is 
by grace, not works. It is by a simple act of faith — 
taking Christ as our Saviour and our type of character 
— that Ave escape from the thralldom of the flesh and 
sin. But it is faitlifulness to duty which is the 
reasonable ground of final reward : '' Be thou faithful 
unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life;" 
" Well done, thou good and faithful servant." 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

It is objected that according to this doctrine those 
who die in infancy can never have praiseworthy char- 
acter. That without opportunity to choose for himself 



THE BASIS OF RESPONSIBLE CHARACTER. 1G3 

no one can do that for which lie shall deserve to be 
praised or blamed is as certain as any axiom can be. 
But if the heavenly Father see fit to give to some of 
his children an immortality without, on the one hand, 
the perils, and on the other hand the advantages, of 
probation, we have no reason to object. A fair pro- 
bation, such as w^e all have who have any probation, 
is a blessing. But without a moral probation it is 
conceivable that those taken from us in infancy, 
blessed with the tuition and inspirations of heaven, 
may attain high intellectual and aesthetic development, 
and, within the scope of their consciousness, may have 
perfect felicity. Who shall say that the variety of the 
presence of such among the sons of God may not con- 
tribute an added charm to the celestial paradise ? But 
our speculations as to the heavenly Father's plans for 
those who die in infancy are of small account. 

It is objected that according to this doctrine the 
character of Christ, our great Exemplar and Leader, 
is without praiseworthiness. The obvious fallacy of 
this objection is that it is based upon our ignorance. 
We do not know that the Son of God, who came 
down from heaven upon his great mission to save, 
may not have had a 23robation, either, as he seemed 
to have, in the preparatory years of his earthly life 
or in his pre-existent state. It is, indeed, inconceivable 
that the divine Person who became incarnate in 
Christ can have had a probation. But the miracle 
man whom he made the shrine of his incarnation may 



164 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

liave liad a probation ; and it is quite conceivable that 
the permanency of the incarnation in the fnUness of 
divine personality may have been conditioned upon 
the perfect integrity of the elect miracle man to the 
probational tests to which he was subjected. It were 
presumption to exalt this suggestion into an article of 
faith. It claims no assured evidences. It is not offered 
as an opinion, bnt only as an admissible hypothesis. 

But it is averred with emphasis that this doctrine 
denies praiseworthy character to the infinite God. It 
is no answer to this objection to affirm that God is 
equally able to do wrong as to do right, and that his 
character is praiseworthy because against equal power 
to the wrong he always chooses the right. No one 
in affirming this means what he ought to mean to 
justify him in the statement. Truth gains nothing 
by such defenses. It is a moral impossibility for God 
to lie or to do any thing else wrong, and that, if com- 
parison be admissible, is the strongest of all impossibil- 
ities. The freedom of God, we need not hesitate to 
affirm, is freedom from the possibility of sin. 

This must be conceded to the objection— that we 
cannot account for the praiseworthiness in the charac- 
ter of God as for that in a child of God who has 
achieved his character in the well-fought battle of 
probation. But neither can we account for the ex- 
istence of God, nor for any of the attributes of God. 
The moral perfections of God, unlike moral excel- 
lence in man, are natural attributes. It is not prob- 



THE BASIS OF RKSPONSIBLE CHARACTER. 165 

able tliat even God could create another being in this 
respect like himself. The difficult}^ here is not with 
tlie freedom of moral agency, but with theism. It is 
no objection to theism, for the reason that it lies in 
the great deep of infinity, where we can afford to let 
it lie forever. Perfect moral excellence belongs in- 
trinsically to an enlightened conception of God, and 
may be called its great essential. Of course, we cannot 
go back of the great First Cause and explain how he 
came to be what lie is, nor how he came to be at all. 
But we cannot help going back of a praiseworthy hu- 
man cliaracter to the cause which made the character 
praiseworthy. To say of a man that he deserves 
commendation is to say he has done well when he 
might have done ill, and well-doing cost him self- 
denial. 

SIN WITHOUT EXCUSE. 

Our conclusion lays bare the sin for which we are 
held accountable as without excuse. Our theologies 
are in fault upon the doctrine of sin in opposite 
directions, and, between the two errors at their ex- 
tremes, logically rule the idea of sin out of the word 
and out of existence. They make at the same time 
too much of sin and too little — too much as a means 
of good, too little as an evil in itself. Upon the fall of 
man into sin many build their entire superstructure 
of Christian doctrine — the incarnation, redemption, 
justification, the new birth, sanctification, eternal life. 
Of course, they do not quite mean that sin is the 



1G6 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Ibundation of Christianity. But we are sometimes 
distinctly tauglit that it is by a fall and recovery that 
eternal life is reached, and, either directly or by im- 
plication, that this is the way the wisdom of God has 
chosen as the best, if not the only way, to perfect his 
children and prepare them for their high destiny. 
This is giving to sin an importance to which it has 
no claim. And who can fail to see that, in thus ex- 
alting sin to the dignity of an essential in the Chris- 
tian system, onr theorizers pretty much explain it 
away as sin? In effect they apologize for sin as but 
a transient evil odious only in appearance. 

Some, doubtless of good right, will protest that this 
statement does not fairly represent their view of sin. 
But the number who squarely reject the premises 
wiiich lead to this conclusion is not great. They 
surely have no right to demur who with Profesvsor 
Drummond regard a perfected Christian character as 
just the culmination of a system of evolution under 
the reign of natural law ; nor tliey who teach us that 
sin is a part of a divinely ordained plan for securing 
the greatest good of the greatest number, however 
earnestly they disclaim the inference that Grod is the 
Author of sin ; nor they who reason from the acci- 
dents of a man's birth and training, or want of train- 
ing, to the conclusion that he probably will sin. 

It is true that the gospel plan of salvation is 
adjusted to the needs of the fallen ; but it is not true 
that a fail into sin is essential to the best possible pro- 



THE BASIS OF RESPONSIBLE CHARACTER. 167 

batioii for eternal life. It is doubtless true that the 
probation of man differs much in details from the 
probation he would have had if neither Adam nor 
his descendants had tasted forbidden fruit ; but it is 
not true tliat the points of difference touch the essen- 
tials of pi'obation. We are not warranted in the 
conclusion tliat in an unfallen world the freedom of 
moral agency and a spiritual life would be natural en- 
dowments, and children would bj the birth of the 
flesh be ushered into the higher life of union with 
God, and that in connection with their probation the 
Son of Grod and the Holy Spirit of God would have 
no part. Tlie Master^s words would be as true as 
they are now, " That which is born of the flesh is 
flesh, and tliat whicli is born of the Spirit is spirit," 
thougli doubtless the Christian nurture of childhood, as 
the divinely ordained human agency in connection with 
the renewing, transforming work of the Spirit, would 
then be the rule instead of as now the exception. 

Of course, in a world without sin repentance and 
pardon would And no occasion ; but faith would 
doubtless, as in present conditions, be wing to the soul 
as it should rise above the earthy into a spiritual life. 

But in a w^orld of free moral agents both kinds of 
character, the morally bad as well as the morally good, 
may be expected. Sin, however^ in no degree or 
sense is required as a means of good, nor can the sin 
for which we are held accountable be charged in any 
degree upon untoward conditions. God compassion- 



168 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ates our infirmities and winks at our sins of ignorance. 
For the sin which he condemns it is impossible to 
make any allowance. The question why men sin 
against the light of God is irrelevant. It is the un- 
reasonableness of sin which makes sin. Nor is there 
any cause for sin outside of the guilty actor. Of 
course the seducer is responsible for his own guilty 
part. But every sinner is the cause of the sin charged 
against him. Where the heavenly Father blames us 
is just where he comes to us by his Spirit to draw us 
toward him, and M^e turn away from him. He con- 
demns only where reason condemns, where no rational 
being knowing the case could fail to condemn. The 
sin which blights and destroys is the ti'ansgression of 
the law written by the Spirit in the heart. It is the 
prostitution of absolute, God-given freedom. It is 
sin for which even the sinner's Friend, the Son of 
God, can find no excuse. 

But the inexcusableness of sin and the speechless- 
ness of the sinner is only a half-statement of the great 
truth before us — that every man's real character is 
solely his own work. Equally and gloriously true is 
it that those who fight the good fight of faith to the 
end will deserve the praise awarded to them by the 
Son of God. The noblest work of God of which we 
can form any conception is the man perfected in 
moral excellence through his own faithful co-working 
with God. To this high end assuredly God is equally 
ready to work mightily in us all. 



XII. 

THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTION. 



OUTLINE.. 



Scripture Statement of Retribution. 
The Doctrine Unburdened of Mistaken Notions. 
Four Invariable Results of Responsible Action to 
the Actor, 



THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTION. 



Retribution is payment back. Tlie word applies 
to whatever comes back to a responsible actor as in 
any way a consequence of liis action. It is oftener 
used in speaking of the recompense of evil-doing ; but 
it aj)plies with equal propriety to the reward which 
follows well-doing ; and the law is as sure in its work- 
ing in the one case as in the other. The Christian 
doctrine of retribution cannot be better stated than in 
Scripture language. 

SCEIPTUKE STATEMENT OF RETRIBUTIOlSr. 

" Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for what- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he 
that sovreth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corrup- 
tion; but he that soweth to tlie Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap life everlasting." 

'' YriiO will render to every man according to his 
deeds : to them who by patient continuance in well- 
doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, 
eternal life : but unto them that are contentious, and 
do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, in- 
dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon 
every soul of man that doeth evil." "The wages of 



172 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sin IS death." " Keep tliy heart with all dihgence, for 
out of it are the issues of hfe." 

Bible-readers need not be told that these are but 
specimen passages of the teachings on this subject of 
both the Old Testament and the New. Tliis Scripture 
doctrine w^e shall find fully supported by fact and 
reason. 

That retribution is an invariable law in the sphere 
of moral action is so directly a corollary of the doc- 
trine of freedom set forth in these pages as to leave 
no logical demand for an added word in proof. But 
the obvious tendency of modern thought to one-sided- 
ness and indeiiniteness on this weighty question calls 
imperatively for clear statement of what commends 
itself as truth. 

THE DOCTRmE UNBURDENED OF MISTAKEN NOTIONS. 

It is expedient first of all to unburden this doctrine 
of mistaken notions which make it seem unreasonable. 
Retribution would be unreasonable if man were noth- 
ing more than the product of conditions not in his con- 
trol. Our conclusion of absolute freedom in man 
upon responsible issues, and of equality in the dealings 
of God with men, assuring for all the best conditions 
for gaining the reward of life eternal, more than meets 
objections to the Christian doctrine of retribution. It 
presents a cheerful, hopeful, inspiring view of our pro- 
bation as life's grand opportunity, and at the same time 
it immensely heightens our responsibility. It proves 



THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTIOX. 173 

that by uncliangeable law of antecedent and conse- 
quent the haj3piest results may be expected to follow 
persistent well-doing, and evil-doing must bring upon 
the doer the direst consequences. 

The results of well-doing and of evil-doing run paral- 
lel, and may be advantageously considered together. 

FOUR SURE RESULTS OF WELL-DOING AND EVIL-DOING. 

1. Hetribution in both cases stands upon the su- 
premacy and immutability of moral law and absolute 
freedom in man as the subject of such law. Eetribu-y 
tion comes by the necessary working of moral law 
in the inseparable consequences of obedience and diso- 
bedience. The right use of our freedom as personal 
actors is conformity to the higher law of the universe, 
and it puts the finite spirit into accord with the infi- 
nite Spirit. It is therefore inconceivable that it should 
not condition the supreme good of being, and that the 
guilty abuse of freedom should not lead in the way to 
death. It is not in Omnipotence to determine for any 
one between the right use and the guilty abuse of 
accountable freedom, nor to interfere with the essen- 
tial consequences of obedience or disobedience to this 
law of laws. Of course, the ethical principle upon 
which moral government is founded must be identical 
in all worlds. 

2. Well-doing and evil-doing bring each its own re- 
ward in the unvarying order of constitutional law and 
its harmony with the demands of moral law. Of 



174 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

moral law, which is unchangeable, we need not further 
treat. But it is conceivable that under the reign of 
a malevolent deity constitutional law might diverge 
widely from the requirements of moral law, and be 
even quite the reverse of what it now is. Evil-minded 
human rulers do sometimes make laws which encour- 
age certain forms of evil-doing. If some giant demon 
were suffered for a time to bear large sway in one of 
the w^orlds in space he might do much within his 
narrow limit to reverse the natural order of sequence 
by putting a premium upon crime and a prohibi- 
tory tariff upon virtue. A dissolute king, if power 
enough were given him over material things, might 
have a freak to make drunkenness and licentiousness 
conditions of health and long life, and dishonesty and 
violence the only road to power and wealth. 

But it is certain that the Creator and supreme 
Kuler has given to all the realms of being such con- 
stitutional law as to encourage well-doing and make 
the way of transgressors hard. Industry, purity, tem- 
perance in all things, moral uprightness toward God 
and man, are seconded and sustained by all the laws of 
our bodies and minds and of the whole material w^orld 
wdth which we have to do, as well as by the constitu- 
tion of society of which we are a part. On the con- 
trary, the transgressor against moral law, though this 
is not always apparent at first, finds in the end the 
entire system of constitutional law against him, and 
retribution certain to follow his every sinful act. 



THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTION. 175 

Thus even the constitutional tendency of sin is inev- 
itably to unhinge and break down the man and de- 
stroy all that is manly in him. 

3. The right and the wrong use of our freedom 
alike bring certain retribution in the judgment of 
God and of all reasonable beings, as well as in our 
own judgment upon our conduct. It is impossible to 
think well of a man who is known to be an habitual 
evil-doer ; and it is impossible, in the exercise of rea- 
son, to think ill of an habitual well-doer. There is 
no world, above or beneath, where evil-doing is not 
condemned by those whose judgment commands re- 
spect ; and there is no eye in the universe under the 
gaze of which the well-doer has any occasion to be 
ashamed. It is true that well-doino* sometimes brino;s 
persecution and even leads to martyrdom ; but it is 
gloriously true, too, that grace abounds toward the 
faithful martyr, causing the very injustice which he 
suffers to develop in him capacity for larger reward. 

4. There is also retribution direct and sure in the 
reward which w^ell-doing and evil-doing each gives 
back to the doer in character. Whoever sins against 
the light of God becomes thereby a sinner, receiving 
into his very soul the brand of sin ; and by each rep- 
etition of sin the brand is deepened, till it strikes 
completely through the soul and makes it utterly 
reprobate. On the contrary, to those who wisely 
make choice of that which is seen to be morally wor- 
thy there comes back at once the beginning of mor- 



176 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ally worthy cliaracter, and, by patient continuance in 
well-doing, tliey are gradually transformed and ma- 
tured into perfected sons of God. 

Moral character, good and bad alike, comes directly 
and necessarily as the result of moral action, with the 
immutability of moral law iteelf. It is not possible 
that a responsible act should not give back to the 
personal actor character answering perfectly to the 
act itself. Besides, every act for w^hich God holds a 
man responsible is exclusively his own act, and the 
character which it gives him is his own work. God 
does, indeed, exercise a providence over man in per- 
mitting him to act and in determining the time, place, 
form, and connections of his actions, but every man, 
when responsible, acts as freely, and he is as abso- 
lutely what he makes himself by his action, as though 
God had nothing to do in the case. 

There is no other reward of human action to be 
compared wdth this result in character, and that 
w4iich it brings by necessary implication. It makes 
all outward conditions of small account. The man 
who has treasured within himself moral excellence in 
character, though he have little or nothing of this 
world's goods, is rich. He has a royal conscience ; he 
respects himself, and he has a right to ; he is entitled 
to the universal respect of his fellow-beings ; he stands 
approved in the light of Heaven, and he has the sure 
guarantee of the life eternal. But the man who has 
made himself a moral wreck, though a millionaire, is 



THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTION. 177 

poor. If he were given a lieaven all his own Om- 
nipotence could not make it heaven to him. He 
has forever forfeited self-respect and the respect 
of earth and heaven, and there is no nook in the uni- 
verse where he can hide from his shame. 

The Christian doctrine of retribution we find rests 
upon solid ground — the supremacy and immutability 
of moral law, and the absolute ireedom in man which 
moral law implies ; the established order of constitu- 
tional law and its adjustment to harmony with moral 
law ; the necessary approval of Heaven and of uni- 
versal reason of the right use of freedom and condem- 
nation of its abuse ; and the certain result to the doer 
in character, either in perfected moral excellence or 
in utter moral ruin. In all this there is nothing 
arbitrary. The results which we have seen come back 
to us are just the unfolded germs of our owm persist- 
ent choice. 

It is true sin is forgiven on the condition of repent- 
ance. " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to 
save sinners." To this mission of redeeming love the 
Father gave his Son and the Son freely gave himself. 
But it is this very redemption which has lifted us up 
to the freedom of moral agents, and lias at the same 
time made sin and sorrow for sin and mercy possible. 
It is not strange that God should forgive sin. It is 
impossible to respect one who is not forgiving in 

spirit. Rebellion against an unmerciful ruler might 
12 



178 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

be foolish and a wrong to innocent parties involved, 
but it could hardly be regarded as a wrong against 
the ruler himself. The disposition to forgive is an 
essential attribute of a perfect character, and condi- 
tions the right, certainly, of absolute sovereignty. 

The readiness of the divine Father to forgive sin 
and the great things he has done for the sinner to 
bring him to repentance and save him, instead of 
w^eakening, add infinite emphasis to the argument for 
retribution npon the persistent in sin. Sin against 
mercy is sin in direst form, and cannot be other than 
sin unto death. Moreover, it is not in mercy to place 
even the penitent sinner back to the height of spot- 
less innocence from which he fell. The least tamper- 
ing witli sin tends inevitably to dwarf the soul and 
makes the highest rank among tlie sons of God for- 
ever impossible. Bishop Simpson, addressing candi- 
dates for ordination, once said, with moistened eyes, 
" I have sometimes felt that I would willingly suffer 
a thousand years if by that means the fact could be 
blotted from my record that I have sinned." 

As to the ultimate destiny of those wlio make them- 
selves reprobate in character it is not necessary for us 
to know beyond what is written ; and w^e need not 
be surprised if Revelation has not answered all our 
queries. The restoration of the moral reprobate is not 
conceivable. Neither is it conceivable that the benevo- 
lent Creator should add the positive infliction of tor- 
ment to the woes which sin itself brings back upon 



THE SOLID GROUND OF RETRIBUTION. 179 

the sinner. It is conceivable that sin may harden its 
victims to moral insensibility. It is not unnatural to 
ask why endless being should be given to the morally 
worthless ; but we have not Scripture warrant for 
affirming their annihilation, and it is by no means 
certain that the wicked themselves would not, if 
choice were given them, cling to degraded being as 
less awful than the doom of annihilation. The mor- 
ally worthy would, of course, infinitely prefer anni- 
hilation to eternal being in utter moral degradation. 
But it does not follow that that must be the choice of 
those who have gone down to the condition of moral 
worthlessness. The worst characters in the hells of 
earth are there of their own preference, and they will 
fight for their lives as instinctively as those who are 
upright in character. 

But, with assured fairness and equality in the deal- 
ings of God with men, the question what disposal he 
will make of 1;he incorrigibly wicked does not concern 
us. He is entitled to our confidence that he will, in 
all things, do that which is reasonable. We are not 
obliged to choose between the eternal perdition of 
degraded being and extinction of being. It is enough 
for us to know that the great reward of life eternal 
is placed equally within the reach of all men, and 
upon conditions the best possible. 



XIII. 

ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 



OUTLINE, 



A Fancied Objection to Elective Freedom. 
Where is the Throne of Freedom ? 

Not in the sphere of outward action. 

Not in particular volitions of men which lie just back of their out- 
ward actions. 

Not in the broader secular plans of men. 

It stands in our power of choice between masters — God and self. 
The Great Decree. 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY, 



Next to our responsibility as moral agents, which 
witliin the ethical sphere carries with it the power of 
choice, there is no conviction more powerful and uni- 
versal in thoughtful minds than that of such a divine 
providence in the affairs of men as involves a divine 
sovereignty wide in its sway over them. And this 
conviction is well grounded. Excepting our freedom 
and responsibility no truth is more constantly as- 
sumed and more fully illustrated in the inspired 
word than that which is summed in such statements as, 
" It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps ; " 
*' Man's goings are of the Lord." Plainly, there is a 
broad realm witliin which God as a wise sovereign de- 
termines for man. Somewhere, too, it is certain that 
every man determines for himself, or the command, 
" Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," which 
sums up all the requirements of the book, could not 
stand. So much may be claimed as assured ground. 

A FANCIED OBJECTION TO ELECTIVE FREEDOM. 

Just here an objection has been raised that freedom, 
with power of choice, excludes the actions and plans 
of men from the divine control, and so makes a plan 



184 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of providential government compreliending them im- 
possible and contradicts a vital doctiine of inspiration. 
President Day, in his work on the Will, has in the 
following words given clear statement to this objec- 
tion, still regarded by a class of religious teachers as 
unanswerable : " If nothing from without the will of 
the agent can have any influence in determining what 
his volitions shall be, then it must be beyond the 
power of the Father of our spirits to give direction to 
the acts of the will, without interfering with the 
prerogative of accountable agency. Omnipotence 
itself cannot work contradictions. When that inex- 
plicable power, the human w^ill, has once been set 
a-going, it must, according to the doctrine of some, be 
suffered to run on forever, throwing off its volitions 
by contingent efficiency, uncontrolled and uncontrol- 
lable by any thing without itself." 

It nmst be admitted that this objection has gener- 
ally been met by counter-objections rather than by 
refutation, and that in the matching of objection 
against objection it is unbelief that has gained the 
advantage. Two essential doctrines of our faith, 
freedom in man and divine sovereignty over man, are 
left in apparently irreconcilable antagonism, and a 
strong case is thus made against the tenableness of 
both. The objection to freedom that it antagonizes 
the doctrine of an all-embracing providence rebounds 
with added force against tlie possibility of such a 
providence. Freedom in man as a moral agent is the 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 185 

one truth which may fairly claim greater prominence 
and explicitness on the inspired pages tlian that of a 
divine providence in the lives of men. The outcome 
is tliat the objection, if valid, is found to lie against 
Christianity itself. 

It cannot be a true statement of these doctrines 
which puts tliem in antagonism to each other, and 
therefore to reason itself. Plainly, man as an ac- 
countable being must liave somewhere absolute free- 
dom, and at that somewhere no power above him 
determines for him. That is as certain as his ac- 
countability and the trustworthiness of his clearest 
consciousness. They are wrong who deny such free- 
dom for man or seek to explain it away. Equally 
clear is it that they are wrong who claim for man 
freedom to choose for himself in the very realm 
where divine sovereignty must bear swaj^ Surely 
they are wrong, too, most absurdly wrong of all, who, 
claiming freedom for man and divine control within 
the same province, think to cover the absurdity by 
affirming as a reason why we cannot reconcile the two 
statements that the question is above human compre- 
hension. There are indeed many questions which are 
above our comprehension, but this is not one of them. 
True, it has not been found easy to trace a dividing-line 
between the freedom of man and a guiding providence 
above man. Need we wonder ? To do this perfectly we 
must have perfect self-knowledge. No follower of a 
human leader knows just how far he acts upon his 



186 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

individual judgment. We have not yet become ex- 
perts in surveying tlie boundaries of human trusts. 
No man can trace exactly the line between the respon- 
sibility of the father and that of the son in making the 
son what he is. Yet no one doubts that there is such 
a line, and that the omniscient eye sees it perfectly, 
and regards it strictly in his administration. We are 
not able to grasp the problem of any one's responsi- 
bility, not even of our own. But we do know that 
two contradictory statements cannot both be true. 
There can be named no clearer, more direct case of 
contradiction than that between the two assumptions 
of elective, responsible freedom in man and of divine 
control over him in the very act of electing. Either 
obviously excludes the other. We must look for re- 
sponsible freedom in man where God does not con- 
trol him. The realms of man's responsible free- 
dom and of God's control, over him must be 
perfectly distinct. Two unlimited rulers at the same 
time over the same realm are impossible. But the 
reign of one ruler at Rome and another at Carthage 
with a Mediterranean between them is entirely prac- 
ticable. So within definite limits God may deter- 
mine for man, aud within other limits he may permit 
man to determine for himself. We must not imagine 
a province of freedom for man in which he acts inde- 
pendently of God. But above question for the free- 
dom for which God holds man accountable there 
must be a throne. 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 187 

WHERE IS THE THRONE OF FREEDOM ? 

We shall find the throne of freedom in man if we 
are able to answer the question, Where is it that 
God does for man a greater thing than to control 
him — gives him power to control himself? Let us 
be patient in seeking an answer to this question. To 
consider it to advantage we shall have first to clear it 
of the fogs of mistaken theory. 

Let us premise that the realm of freedom for man 
need not and cannot be indefinite in its range. Man 
is not yet large enough to be ruler over many things. 
His freedom is not that of the master, but rather that 
of a helmsman under orders. To put him in unlim- 
ited command even of the bark of his own life would 
wreck him as surely as it would wreck a sldp at sea 
to give it into the command of a child of five years. 
Man is free at the helm to steer in confident hope 
toward the celestial haven, for the very reason that a 
greater than he governs for him the winds, and has 
had so much to do in manning his bark and planning 
for him the voyage of life, and has given him an 
unerring chart. 

Shall we find the supremacy of human freedom in 
the sphere of outward action ? Does the man decide 
for himself in the movements of the hand, the foot, 
the organs of speech ? Many liave responded aflirm- 
atively who mean but little. It is not saying much 
to afiirm for man, as Edwards does, freedom to do as 



188 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lie pleases, and that this is the highest conceivable 
freedom, and then to explain that man's freedom is 
simply his power or opportunity to do that which he 
cannot help being pleased to do, with no power to 
alternative action. 

Edwards found room for a plan of providence em- 
bracing all the actions of men in his doctrine of a 
divine sovereignty which makes man always pleased 
to do as he does do. To this it is sufficient to-day to 
answer, The verdict of faith and reason against the 
doctrine is decisive. God is not a hard master, nor is 
it possible that man should either be praiseworthy 
or blameworthv in doino; that which is unavoidable. 
More freedom than this theory admits an accountable 
being must have. Doubtless within the little woi*ld 
of his. own ability and opportunity, be it a cell, a 
palace, or a kingdom, every man is at liberty to do as 
he pleases — to turn his foot eastward or westward, 
to take in his hand the offered apple or peach, to 
adjust his voice to conversational tones or to music, 
and to the expression of whatever he desires. The 
question is. How shall this liberty of man in outward 
actions be reconciled with a divine providence which 
embraces such actions ? 

The crude notion sometimes loosely thrown out, 
that the actions of men freely put forth independ- 
ently of a guiding power above are taken up by the 
infinite Sovereign and incorporated into the plan of 
his providence, scarcely deserves notice. Obviously, 



ASSURED IX DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 189 

after a deed is done it is too late to pick it up and put 
it into new connections. If the agent is sovereign in 
the entire reahn of outward activity, then every act 
is wliere he places it. Obviously, too, if the actions 
of men are all embraced in the plan of providence, 
the God of providence must have something to do in 
determining and guiding their actions. 

The mistake of freedomists has been claiming too 
much for the liberty of man to act out his natural 
inclinations. To do as one pleases is a deceptive 
phrase, and means less than it seems to from a surface 
view. The truth is this kind of freedom does not 
necessarily imply either responsibility or avoidability. 
It is but the lowest form of freedom — the libertv in 
which the inferior animals are sharers with man. 
Liberty to do as one pleases does not with him, any 
more than with them, imply freedom to that which is 
not one's pleasure. It is freedom to but one way — lib- 
erty to take the choice providence has made for him. 

We know, moreover, as a fact of experience, that 
the liberty of man to do as he pleases is indefinitely 
in the sway of even human influences. One man of 
position, means, and tact, without touching the moral 
principle upon which they act, may make it the 
pleasure of a thousand men to do that which other- 
wise they could have no desire to do, leading them to 
change their places of residence and business, and so 
affecting all their courses of action in all subsequent 
life. This unquestionable fact assures us that the 



190 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

control of God over the actions of men must be very 
wide, and justifies the conchision that in some way 
his guiding hand is concerned in all their goings. 
Not then in the outward actions of men has freedom 
her scepter. To give wise direction to the currents 
of liuman activity is the foundation- work of provi- 
dential government. 

Is the supremacy of freedom found in particular 
volitions of men that lie just back of all their outward 
actions ? 

" Yes," answer a multitude of voices ; " it is in 
the will that man is free. He is always free to w411 
as he pleases, though not always free to do as 
he wdlls.'' But in this plausible statement, as ac- 
cepted by many, nothing more is intended than 
Edwards meant, in whose use of words the loill w^as 
identical with the inclination^ and to do always in- 
cluded tlie inner as well as the outer, the mental as 
well as the bodily act. The claim for man of freedom 
to will as he pleases is no real modification, but is 
rather the modern statement of the identical doctrine 
of Edwards accepted as a finality by all his later dis- 
ciples. They do not, when self-consistent, mean free- 
dom to alternative volition, but simply liberty to will 
as one cannot help preferring. They place every act 
of man's will as well as every movement of his body 
under the sway of divine sovereignty. They find for 
man no province, not even a point, where freedom is 
absolute. 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 191 

To set up the claim, as some have done, of actual, 
alternative fi-eedom in distinct volitions antecedent to 
all our bodily movements is to put contradiction at 
the front. Doubtless it is possible for Omnipotence 
to come between the human will and a purposed 
deed — to turn the deadly weapon of the assassin from 
his intended victim to the breast of his comrade, and 
to cause the judge on the bench to say " Acquitted " 
when he would pronounce sentence of death. But 
such a providence would be out of harmony with all 
the analogies of experience and involve perpetual 
miracle. If God ever works in tliat way, surely that 
is not the rule of providence, but the rare exception, 
and every such exception must make the act God's, 
not man's. 

It is true men often think to do that which they 
do not find themselves able to do. But none the less, 
every act a man is able to perform has the same free- 
dom or liberty as the mental act or state which it 
indexes. We can have no other freedom in our actual 
volitions than in the deeds by which we put them 
forth. 

Yery true, it is in the wdll that man is free, and of 
this his consciousness is clear. It is the will-power in 
man, or the power of self-control, which makes freedom 
possible to him. But it is a groundless assumption 
that every bodily act has behind it an act of the will 
— a volition pushing itself outward. I have walked 
the half mile between my residence and the post-office 



192 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

many times ; but rarely if ever have I been con- 
scious of a step taken, and probably never of willing 
the foot into movement. When an expert pianist 
plays a rapid tune accompanying the music of the in- 
strument with the voice it is absurd to claim for all 
the movements of eyes, fingers, and organs of speecli 
antecedent volitions. The truth is, the mental ante- 
cedents of bodily actions are oftener feelings and 
thoughts withont volitions than with them. In the 
mere struggle of conflicting feelings, of course, it is 
the stronger that dominates, and the will has no part. 
Only when inclination is challenged by duty does the 
will find occasion to come into action. 

I^or does the presence of a moral consideration take 
the actions of men out of the realm of a guiding 
providence. The freedom of a good man consists in 
no degree in deciding whether he shall serve God in 
the vales of life or on its giddy heights. He chooses, 
or wills, not liow he shall serve, but whom. Upon 
this basis question alone is his will directly concerned. 
His great choice having been made, and being stead- 
fastly maintained, it is the heart and intelligence of 
the disciple that prompt his deeds, and he comes and 
goes as the Word, the Spirit, and Providence direct. 

'' Christian works are no more than animate love 
and faith, as flowers are the animate spring-tide." 
JSTeither does the freedom of man to make himself a 
reprobate depend in the least upon such questions as 
when and where and how — questions of time, place, 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 193 

connection, form. In fact, the sinner, in choosing 
the wrong, forfeits his freedom and becomes a slave. 

Shall we look for the throne of freedom one re- 
move further back in the broader purposes and plans 
of a man to which particular forms of activity are 
subordinate — his purpose to erect a liouse, to build a 
city, to found a university, to make himself a king, 
and his plans for carrying out his purpose ? Is each 
'man in the formation of such purposes and plans an 
independent actor? Can no power without himself 
control him here ? 

To put this question clearly is to answer it. There 
is, as already indicated, a higher, an ethical sense of 
this word purpose not now in question ; but in such 
generic purposes and plans as those mentioned above 
facts every-where apparent show be3'ond a doubt that 
men do largely influence each other. Upon Lincoln's 
election to the presidency depended all his subsequent 
plans and purposes in life. Washington's wooing 
and winning the heart and hand of Martha Custis as 
his faithful wife turned the whole current of her life 
into channels otherwise not open to her. The gener- 
alization is obvious. The law of dependence in our 
plans in life, each upon others, reigns throughout 
human society. We all have much to do in deter- 
mining the environments of others, and thus in open- 
ing to them fields of activity and giving shape to 
their plans in life. It by no means follows that we 

determine at the same time the responsible characters 
13 



194 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which others carry into and cultivate in the fields we 
have something to do in opening to them. 

There is on the libertarian side a loosely accepted 
popular notion of an overruling providence, which, be- 
cause of its implications, deserves more attention from 
thinking minds than it has received. It is that the 
divine control in the affairs of men may be somewhat 
analogous to the sway of a great military commander 
over an army, or of a far-seeing, energetic politicar 
leader over his party. This view of providence both 
concedes more and embraces more than appears upon 
the surface. It begins at the right end witli a well- 
known fact, namely, that even a human leader is 
able largely to influence the plans of his fellow-men ; 
and it reasons from this to the more extensive control 
of the omnipotent, omnipresent Ruler. The sugges- 
tion thus completely abandons the hypothesis of in- 
definite freedom in liuman activity. It carries with 
it the admission that the freedom of man is under 
definite limitations which make such control over him 
possible. It needs but to be sustained by a clear 
statement of the limitations which it involves. 

Conceive the number of sides of a polygon to be 
multiplied to infinity, and the sides would become 
but points, and the polygon would become a perfect 
circle. Not less conclusive and far-reaching is the 
argument contained in this suggestion. A Caesar or 
a Napoleon can wield such power over millions as to 
reconstruct the political map of a continent Need 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 195 

the obvious conclusion be fornmlated that where man 
can so largely control the activities of his fellow-men 
God must be able in all but that in which he holds 
them accountable to control them wholly ? What is 
the power of myriads of Caesars and Napoleons in 
comparison with the infinite power of God ? 

That thus wide is the realm of God's supremacy 
over man, and that this is essential to an all-embracing 
plan of divine providence, is a valid claim. If we 
had, as some afBrm, in every act we perform the power 
to act in any one of several different directions, there 
could be no such thing as a divine control over our 
actions. Instead of the actions of men entering into 
a plan of providence SQch a plan would be impossible. 
The divine Being could have nothing to do with the 
actions of men but to reward and punish, and the 
reign of chaos would be universal. 

Some one has fancied as one of the decillions of 
chances that the requisite number of Greek letters of 
the riorht kind scattered to conflictins: winds mi^ht 
fall upon a canvas in such an arrangement as to form 
the Iliad of Homer. Decillions of times less than 
that infinitesimal chance is the probability that the 
volitions of one man thrown off independently of 
God's control should accidently fall into a symmetrical 
and wise plan itself but a decillionth part of the vast 
plan which embraces all the events of time. But 
even if they should, the plan would not be God's any 
more than it would be Caesar's. The plan of God in 



196 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

every human life, whether unfolded in tlie light of 
heaven or buried in the eartli, is an epic surpassing 
the Iliad as the Iliad the simplest nursery rhyme. 
At the same time it is a mathematical problem so 
vast and complicated that even the number of its 
factors exceeds our comprehension. How sublime 
tlien must be the plan of providence that embraces all 
lives, and to every true life makes every other life 
with which it is connected at every other point of 
contact a blessing, so that each faithful soul may 
claim the promise, '' All things work together for 
good! " Plainly, the God of such a providence must 
have wide sway over human activity both in the inner 
world of mind and in the outer world of expression 
— " working in us both to will and to do of his good 
pleasure." 

If not in the outward actions of men, not in distinct 
volitions antecedent to each particular action, not, 
with the exception indicated, in the purposes and 
plans to which our activity is so largely subordinate, 
where, then, the question comes back to us with em- 
phasis, where is the throne of freedom ? If the 
proper negatives have been fairly put with just quali- 
fication, our question is as good as answered. The 
throne of freedom in man is found in his ability to 
say which shall be his master — his convictions of duty 
or the natural appetites and desires with which they 
collide. It stands in his power to surrender to God or 
to suffer forbidden pleasure to hold time as its slave. 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 197 

Upon this great question of his probation in no 
manner or degree does the great Father control tlie 
decisions of his child, nor suffer any other power to 
control them. On this one question, and this alone, 
whether he will obey God or self, every man is abso- 
lutely free. We must keep in mind that the divine 
control over the currents of human actions, volitions, 
and plans does not imply the least power over re- 
sponsible character. Whatever he is in this regard 
every man m.akes himself. No other power in earth 
or heaven has any part in ranking him on the moral 
scale. All that can be done for man here is to give 
him opportunity. We must therefore always except 
as not in the keeping or control of any providence 
the moral principle, or life purpose^ upon which we 
act. Here God npliolds us and opens for us the w^ay. 
In every thing else he controls or leads or carries us. 
The accidents of a man's life may accelerate or retard 
his development ; but it is not reasonable, nor is it in 
the nature of the case possible, that they should in the 
end affect his moral standing with God. 

For illustration open to any chapter of experience. 
Turn a stream into whatever channel you please, and 
its waters will be the same. The capitalist draws to 
his village such classes as find their preferences in the 
attractions which lie holds out to them, whether such 
as distilleries, breweries, dram-shops, low play-houses, 
gambling dens and brothels, or honorable industries 
with the helps and inspirations of schools, libraries, 



198 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

art-galleries, and churches. The openings of provi- 
dence were intended to afford men of all grades of 
moral excellence or obliquity their free opportu- 
nity — tlie man of the Christ spirit to serve God 
and his fellow-men, the self-seeker to make self 
his end. Joseph's brethren acted upon the same 
moral principle when they prepared ,to take his life, 
and set about the execution of the wicked purpose 
by subordinate plans and actions in putting him into 
a pit of death, as when a little later, through an un- 
looked-for opening of providence, they formed and 
executed the new purpose to sell him for gain to be 
carried a slave into Egypt. Yet in all their changing 
devices the heavenly Father held them in his hand, 
and carried forward his own grand purpose, not alone 
to save the lives of Joseph and his sons, but by them 
to lead the way of the great salvation equally for all 
the sons and daughters of his earthly family. " There 
are many devices in the heart of man ; nevertheless, 
the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand." 

But we must not jump to the absurd conclusion 
that the higher freedom of man as a moral agent even 
to choose between God and mammon is of nature 
alone. If even God could construct an independent, 
self-acting perpetual-motion machine, certainly not 
thus has he made man. He has endow^ed man w^ith 
a natural capacity to attain to a higher freedom than 
that of nature, but not independently. As shown in 
other articles, it is by the Spirit of God breathing 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 199 

into him the breath of a higher than animal life — a 
consciousness of moral obligation and accountability 
— that he is made capable of taking hold upon God 
and rising up out of nature into the actual exercise 
of this nobler freedom in the sphere of responsibility. 
For the freedom of moral agency we are dependent 
both upon the Spirit of God as a vitalizing power and 
upon the providence of God opening to us the way. 

Does our conclusion restrict alternative freedom 
within narrow bounds? Yes, in mere area when 
compared with the notion of some libertarians that 
such freedom pertains to the entire realm of human 
activity. Yet in the essentials of freedom incompara- 
bly higher is our claim. Freedom to choose between 
God and self is freedom at the sources of all account- 
able action, and reaches as a power for life or death 
throughout probation. Of course it is not meant that 
the choice is of necessity once for all. Within the 
period of probation we may change masters. 

To define the will, as some virtually do, as a power 
of man upon every question, ethical or non-ethical, to 
choose between an indefinite number of alternatives 
is to define freedom out by reducing it to zero ; and, 
if it did not define freedom out, it would completely 
crowd out providence. The doctrine of this article 
gives to alternative freedom all the room it has any 
occasion for, and gives room at the same time for a 
perfect plan of providence embracing all events, it 
defines the realm of alternative freedom to be just as 



200 THK DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

extensive as human accountability, and here it finds 
for freedom a tlirone. 

Broad is the empire of God's providence, and good 
for man that it is so. The infinite Fatlier is equal to 
the care involved. But man is not another God. 
He is but a creature. To extend his freedom to elect 
for himself through a wide empire would be to spread 
it so thin that it could but vanish into weakness. 
Freedom is power. The freedom of man to choose 
for himself is the point of power in man, and there is 
but a point where it is possible for the supremacy of 
so dependent a being to be perfect. 

Of course, sliort-sighted man cannot grasp the plan 
of God's providence any more than an infant can 
grapple the problems of astronomy. But neither can 
a reasonable mind doubt that God is able to uphold 
man in his own choice between masters and at the 
same time to plan wisely for him. 

THE GREAT DECREE 

of the infinite Sovereign determines not the character 
of any man for praiseworthiness or blameworthiness ; 
but for all men equally and perfectly it assures 
freedom to meet the divine requirements, and 
therefore opportunity to secure the divine favor. 
We cannot too strongly protest against a reaction- 
ary tendency on the part of extreme conservatives 
toward agnosticism on the great questions which 
have divided the Church. It is not the dropping 



ASSURED IN DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 201 

out or suppression of the vital truths of divine sov- 
ereignty and the freedom of probation that Chris- 
tian faith demands, but clearer and higher concep- 
tions of both. Why we hear so little now of divine 
sovereignty is doubtless the conviction that the doc- 
trine as formerly held is unreasonable, and the lack 
of any satisfactory view to take its place. But we 
cannot endure vagueness upon a question so vital. 
To drop divine sovereignty from our faith were to 
let go our hold upon God. A divine sovereignty 
which commends itself as reasonable is a necessity of 
faith. Our freedom depends upon the sovereignty of 
God as our life upon his breath. A world of free 
moral agents left to themselves, yet largely dependent 
upon each other for the attainment of responsible 
character, and therefore for their final destiny, if 
it were not an absurdity, would yet be a world with- 
out order and without God. And no better would 
be the sway of an absolute sovereignty which should 
overpower all freedom, and for half the world should 
in effect amount to an infinite juggernaut. Drop 
divine sovereignty ? A Christianity without this 
central truth would be but a top-growth without trunk 
or root, instead of a tree of life expanding in beauty 
and fruitf ulness forever. "What our common theology 
of to-day needs is to be grafted anew with the Chris- 
tian doctrine of an all-embracing divine sovereignty 
as far surpassing the outgrown notions on the subject 
as does a well-ordered, intelligent universe the neces- 



202 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sitated whirl and liuin of a machine world — a sover- 
eignty which makes every child of God a center in 
the plan of his providence and grace as much as 
though the w^hole plan were formed for himself 
alone. Equality m probation by the decree of God 
means just that true divine sovereignty. 



XIV. 

THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 



OUTLINE. 



Our Dependence for Freedom on the Father's Care. 

How God Directs Men in Actions Prompted by their Loyalty to Him. 

How He Controls Actions Prompted by Inclination. 

God's Plans for Men Formed in View of their Loyalty or Disloyalty. 

How God Directs Actions in Permitting Them. 



THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 



OUR DEPENDENCE FOR FREEDOM ON THE FATHER'S CARE. 

The preceding article sought to show that the 
freedom of man to elect for himself, though absolute, 
is restricted to a point — choice between masters, God 
and self — and is not therefore inconsistent with an 
all-directing providence over the channels through 
which our free choice finds outflow. The freedom of 
man in the school of probation is the freedom of a 
cliild to choose the lead of a parent. He is, indeed, 
free to refuse the divine hand. But by every such 
abuse of his freedom in effect he chooses bondage. 
Without a heavenly Father's sustaining and inspiring 
and guiding presence man would be but " a waif on 
a sea of accidents." Freedom to rise up out of bond- 
age to the flesh into the sphere of reason and spirit- 
ual life comes to man only as his natural faculties are 
called into their best exercise by a God above him. 
This higher freedom to make wisdom his own choice 
is a gift of God to man in addition to his natural 
endowments. It includes the work of the Spirit 
within him and of providence environing him, and is 
the part of our outfit for life upon which the whole 
depends. The work of the Spirit as a liberator in- 



206 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

volving a new birth is made the subject of a separate 
article.'^ The work of providence in bestowing free- 
dom upon man is the special theme of the present 
article. 

For a plan of providence embracing all human 
actions and perfect in adaptation to the wants and 
characters of every individual member of the race the 
view of freedom before us afibrds ample room. We 
liave seen how in this view all the actions of men fall 
into these two sharply distinguished classes — those 
put forth in loyalty to God and those prompted by 
natural inclination. By keeping this distinction in 
mind we shall come to advantage to the question how 
the actions of men, though in diverse ways, are all 
completely in the direction of the divine will, yet so 
as not in the least to trench upon the freedom of 
man as a moral agent. 

HOW GOD DIRECTS MEN IN ACTIONS PROMPTED BY LOY- 
ALTY TO HIM. 

Intelligent faith has no difficulty in accepting the 
truth, '' The steps of a good man are ordered by the 
Lord." Within quite an area we are able to see how 
he does this. Largely he guides the good man by 
teaching him. As far as we have eyes to see, and 
ears to hear, and hearts to obey he orders our steps by 
showing us the way of life. He treats with respect 
the intelligence and power with which he has en- 
* " The New Birth into Freedom." 



THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 207 

dowed us, by telling us in his written word what to 
do and what not to do, what he has done for us and 
what he is ready to do, and upon what conditions. 
He has given us a chart upon which are mapped out 
before us the great fields of duty with all needed in- 
structions, encouragements, and warnings. Here is 
the decalogue, the constitutional law for all the gen- 
erations of men. Here are the statutes of God set to 
the nnisic of sacred verse. Here, painted in light, 
shines forth the great law of love. Here are the in- 
structions and inspirations of holy example. Here is 
portrayed the perfect character of the Son of God, 
the ideal pattern of true manhood. Here in letters 
of blood is the Magna Charta of our redemption and 
the covenant of our adoption. Here is the bright 
galaxy of divine promises spanning the firmament of 
life, and pouring upon all our pathway the radiance 
of heaven. 

Partly God directs his faithful children by the 
voices of his Spirit in their consciences — that is, 
through their own intelligence of what is right and 
their love for the right. '^As many as are led by the 
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." With 
facts so high as the voices of the Spirit of God within 
us our philosophy can do little or nothing; yet are 
they at times the most real of all our experiences. 

Within the compass of their intelligence the divine 
Father guides those who delight to do his will by 
presenting to them worthy motives. Where his chil- 



208 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dren are able but imperfectly to judge and plan for 
themselves he overrules their plans and takes the 
hand they reach out to him in trusting love and leads 
them. He says to them, " I will instruct thee and 
teach thee in the way thou shalt go : I will guide thee 
with mine eye." "In all thy ways acknowledge him, 
and he shall direct thy paths." Those who are but 
babes in strength he takes in his arms and lifts them 
over the perils and difficulties to which they are un- 
equal. '^He shall gather the lambs in his arm and 
carry them in his bosom." 

Thus complete is the system of agencies by which 
the heavenly Father makes free those whose aims are 
one with his, and directs them all in the lines of his 
providence. He calls and they come. At his bidding 
they go upon his errands with willing feet. He gov- 
erns them as a wise captain his faithful soldiers, as a 
father his obedient children, as he governs the angels 
of heaven who delight to do his pleasure. They do 
not comprehend his great plan. Some of them know 
him only as he reveals himself to them in nature and 
providence or whispers to them in their consciences, 
having never heard of his written word. But he 
knows them all perfectly. He knows what it is rea- 
sonable to ask of them, and how much they need him 
to do for them. To him all deeds are small ; worthy 
motives only are great. Copper is more valued than 
gold where it expresses more of unselfish devotion. 
An innocent mistake in judgment counts nothing 



THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 209 

against those who in spirit are loyal to their Maker. 
He can and does overrule for good. In obeying their 
consciences they honor God. To do tlieir best is as 
acceptable to him as an angel's best. In trying to 
do well they are building under his lead, and he 
builds by them. It is the royal seal of the Master 
that gives to an act significance and value in the great 
index-book of character. If all men did but the rea- 
sonable thing, to acknowledge God in all their ways, 
that he might direct their paths, earth would be so 
like heaven as to need a new name. 

DIVINE CONTROL IN ACTIVITY PROMPTED BY INCLINA- 
TION. 

Widely different in method, but not less real, is 
the divine control over the larger class or classes of 
human actions called forth at the prompting of nat- 
ural inclination. This kind of action is not restricted 
to bad men. It embraces the entire activity of irre- 
sponsible childhood, together with all the actions of 
good as well as bad men which do not spring from 
the higher motives of moral obligation. All these 
actions are of one class, in that they have this common 
characteristic — ^they are put forth in the order of 
cause and effect under the rule of natural law. They 
belong to that department of the great system of 
providence distinguished as nature. Sinful actions, of 
course, fall into this class by the guilty^ choice of the 

sinner. His sin consists in that he consents to be in 
14 



210 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

bondao:e to natural law when he is divinely called to 
fi-eedoni as the subject of moral law. 

God is not nature, as pantheism would teach us, but 
God is in nature as its soul; not, indeed, just as the 
soul of man is in his body, but certainly in a way not 
less real. Nature is a body wliicli God has made and 
uses at his pleasure as a servant of his children, and 
through all realms he is the universal Lawgiver. The 
same hand gives to the tiniest flower its delicate text- 
ure, color, and curves, and its exquisite fragrance that 
made the majestic worlds of space and governs them 
in their orbits. His glory, as we are wont to sing, 
flames in the sun and gleams in the star. He whis- 
pers in the breeze and thunders in the storm, clothes 
the grass of the field, feeds the young ravens, num- 
bers the hairs of our heads. All things are by him 
and all word forth his wisdom. 

Such was the conception of the men of God of 
ancient time, and not less of Christ and his inspired 
followers. If this conception needs any qualification 
it is doubtful if our planet grows minds of the stature 
to undertake the task. Christian faith need not hesi- 
tate to accept this only theistic conception of nature 
as essential truth. If the modern suggestion of evo- 
lution as the method of creation shall proA^e to be a 
well-founded probability, more, rather than less, will 
Christian faith be able to trace in it the hand of a 
life-giving, miracle-working God. 

In all but the soul-life breathed into him by 



THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 211 

the divine Father endowing liim witli freedom man 
is himself a part of nature. So far as he was made to 
live and mov^e and have liis being in nature, or elects to 
do so in the misuse of his freedom, he is subject to nat- 
ural law equally with the less intelligent of the animal 
tribes. Thus are the actions of men called forth by- 
incentives that appeal to inclination anyw^here on the 
scale of nature — bodily appetites, desires, and affec- 
tions of the mind, natural goodness of heart — all seen 
to be as perfectly in the divine control as is every 
thing else in nature. 

In this class of actions are included not only the 
unavoidable and irresponsible from the absence of an 
alternative, but also, as showm in other connections, 
all sinful actions ; for every sin is a guilty surrender 
to' nature — yielding to some inchnation of nature 
against the will of God. It is partaking of some kind 
of forbidden fruit, indulging in some appetite or pro- 
pensity which ought to be resisted, and comes thus 
by the sinner's own election under the same law as 
brute action. He who prostitutes his freedom in 
sinful indulgence by that very act forfeits his freedom 
and becomes a slave, as both Scripture and reason, 
and, alas ! experience, too abundantly teach. The 
soul alone is truly free that rises up out of nature, 
clearing itself from all the seductions of unholy de- 
sire, and takes hold upon God. 

"He is a freeman whom the truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside." 



212 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 



GOD PLANS FOR MEN IN VIEW OF THEIR LOYALTY OR 

DISLOYALTY. 

It is true this view of an all-embracing providence 
does not agree with the notion of an arbitrary control 
of God over the moral conduct of men reaching even 
to the determination of the characters for which they 
are held accountable ; and surely that is not just what 
Christian necessitarians intend to teach. They do 
not accept the conclusion that God is tlie author of 
sin. Indeed, just this logical consequence of their 
teachings is the difficulty which they are ever seeking 
to escape. Probably no one will be found to-day to 
resurrect the objection that it would be derogatory to 
the sovereignty of God to suppose he consults in his 
plans of providence the agency of men. If God holds 
men accountable it is the plainest dictate of reason 
tliat he uphold them in the freedom of moral agency 
and have respect in his dealings with them to its Ipyal 
or disloyal exercise. The plans of a wise father for 
his children always have due reference to their fidelity 
to what he reasonably expects of them. He helps 
them to help themselves, and enlarges their trusts as 
they prove themselves worthy. 

What is tlie providence of God in our world but the 
care of a Father over his children in the school of tlieir 
probation — his purpose and plan to give them all a fair 
and equal opportunity to meet his reasonable require- 
ments and attain a preparation for the better things 



THE EXD AXD AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 213 

made ready for them in a future life ? Of this he has 
not left us occasion to doubt. The inspired word, 
from beginning to end, teaches ns that God's plans in 
respect to men are formed on the basis of their own 
plans as moral agents. Instead of planning independ- 
ently of them he controls every thing which concerns 
them, including their outward actions — the forms in 
which their characters find expression — with a wise 
regard to their accountability within the province 
of their absolute freedom — the heart. " A man's 
lieart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his 
steps." 

This places man under the divine control just so far 
as is necessary to a scheme of providence perfect in 
its adaptation to his needs as an accountable agent. It 
does not give him, as some suppose him to have, in 
every act which goes forth from him several different 
alternatives to which he is equally free ; but it limits 
alternative action to just those cases where God 
holds men accountable, and here it shuts them up in 
every instance to an election between two ways — 
obedience to some voice of God or the improper indul- 
gence of some inclination of nature ; and then it makes 
the responsible character formed of all such elections 
the basis of the divine plans in respect to them. (Is 
it an accidental coincidence that our word alternative 
cannot with strict propriety be applied to more than 
two things?) To extend the divine control further 
would be to defeat the chief purpose of a providential 



214 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

government, which is found unquestionably in our 
responsibility to God and the great interests involved. 

A writer ^ who often suggests more than he says 
has brought into clear view the great thought that 
God has a distinct plan in each human life. Doubt- 
less in every child created in his image the heavenly 
Father has his own ideal of an upright, perfectly 
developed man, and answering to this an ideal plan for 
the free, bright, complete unfolding of his high possi- 
bilities. With the fidelity that is practicable these 
glorious ideals might become real. But the Father 
does not give up every child not perfect in obedience. 
He throws away only those who make themselves 
reprobate. For us each he has a fit place according 
to the pattern to which we shape ourselves. Many a 
man fit only to carry the hod all his days might with 
self-denying diligence in early life have qualified him- 
self to be a master-builder. Many a weak-minded 
flirt, whose chief capacity is to show off the latest 
f asliions, might have made herself a woman of queenly 
grace and power. Many a life has ended in failure 
in attempting giddy heights which might in the vale 
have found its throne. 

Tliere is in every human life a wide range of possi- 
bilities — downward in rank to the snail whose world 
is his shell, upward to the freedom and completeness 
of a full-grown son of God. The Father has for us 
each as large a place as we are capable of filling, 
* Dr. Horace Bushnell. 



THE EXD AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 215 

though not always on the mountain-top ; and he will 
not fail to do his part in helping ns in the work of 
preparation. His real plans in our lives doubtless are 
adjusted to our own moral standard. He plans for us 
the best things that we permit. By far inferior must 
be his real plan in a life dwarfed by sin from his ideal 
plan for the same life conditioned upon steadfast 
integrity. So the great plan of his providence in oui* 
world embracing all human lives and all events is not 
his ideal plan for a sinless world ; but it is a plan 
perfect in its adaptation to the measures of our ability 
and fidelity as a race and to the ratio of the one to the 
other. For the war and outrao^e with which earth is 

CD 

filled heaven has no need. Sin is not a necessity to a 
moral probation, and it is in no sense of divine 
appointment. It is purely the fault of moral agents 
in the exercise of absolute freedom, and is therefore 
without excuse. 

HOW GOD DIRECTS IN HUMAN ACTIONS IN PERMITTING 

THEM. 

God permits sin, not requires it. But to permit 
implies power to prevent and control. It is often 
wise to permit those under our care to do that which 
we would not require or advise. It is better to let 
them share with us the responsibility. In doing as we 
permit they act their own pleasure as freely as though 
we had nothing to do with their action. Yet they do 
that v/hich they could not do without our permission. 



216 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

We take the responsibility of permitting that which 
otherwise could not be done, and where our permission 
is the only contingency it makes certain the deed. A 
little girl of five years comes to her father on a severe 
winter morning eager for his permission to go out 
coasting on the icy hill-side with her new sled. He 
consents, as the best way, perhaps the only satisfactory 
way to her, to teach her a lesson, and he watches her 
tenderly from his window, ready to spring to her 
assistance when she needs him. In permitting her to 
go he takes the responsibility of her going. He knows 
that with his permission she cannot help going out. 
He expects she will suffer for a time from the piercing 
winds and tlie little mishaps sure to befall her. Not 
the pleasure, but the instruction and discipline, he 
judges to be worth to her the cost. 

All the liberty in the world is by the heavenly 
Father's permission, and is restricted within bounds 
set by his providence. When that is well for us, 
either as good in itself or as a means of discipline, he 
is pleased to permit us without question to seek our 
own pleasure. Doubtless it is under such permission 
and in the exercise of this inferior kind of freedom, 
with no real alternative, that the larger part of human 
action is put forth. But God also permits us to do 
that which he forbids. In this his purpose diverges 
somewhat from that of hum.an government. Civil 
law seeks to prevent that which it prohibits. A prime 
purpose of God's providential government is to make 



THE END AND AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 2^ 

ns equally free to obedience and disobedience. It is 
thus tliat he gives us the trust of moral freedom — 
our noblest endowment. Yet is there no conflict 
between divine law and wise civil law. Their prov- 
inces have not the same boundaries. The province 
of moral law is the heart, or intention ; that of civil 
law is the outward conduct. To the moral law of 
God the deed, with which civil law is chiefly concerned, 
is nothing but an index to the purpose from which it 
springs. Before God the murderer in intention is as 
guilty as the murderer in fact. Providence may inter- 
pose to prevent the evil deed without in the least 
trenching upon tlie freedom of moral agency. The 
deadly blow of Cain made him a criminal in the eyes 
of men ; but it was the malicious purpose which in the 
eye of Heaven branded him as a murderer. 

God permitted Joseph's brethren to be murderers 
in intention, yet so far thwarted them as to turn the 
current of their evil disposition into the channel of 
avarice in selling him to the merchantmen to be car- 
ried a slave into Egypt. He permitted and linked 
together tlie chain of events that carried Joseph to 
the right hand of power at the court of Pharaoh. 
All the actors freely did their own pleasure and gave 
expression to their own character. But in all this 
Jehovah too had a purpose and a plan forcibly ex- 
pressed in the remarkable words of Joseph to his 
brethren : " It was not you that sent me hither, but 
God." " As for you, ye thought evil against me ; 



218 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is 
tliis day, to save mncli people alive." Not less real 
is his providential care and purpose of love every- 
vs^here restraining: and directino; and overrnlins; and 

o o n 

working all things according to the counsel of his 
wisdom. 

Thus is the absolute freedom of man as a moral 
agent seen to accord with a divine providence in 
every respect superior to that which is possible on 
the hypothesis of necessity. The notion of a plan of 
providence which necessitates the conduct and the 
responsible characters of men to be in every respect 
just as they are, makes its autlior to be a great me- 
chanic rather than an infinite moral Sovereign. 
Easy, indeed, of comprehension is such a plan, quite 
too easy to be true of Him in whom are hidden all the 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and whose 
thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are 
liigher than the earth. 

Moreover, to ascribe such a plan to tlie infinite 
One, such with all the guilt and woe of the universe 
because for his own sake he would have it so, is to 
attribute to him a character which reverence forbids 
us to describe in connection witli his name. Nor is 
it any adequate apology to say that the divine Being 
has ordained the guilt and misery of the world, not 
of his mere will or for his own sake, but because just 
so much is essential to the best system of law of 
which he is capable ; for that represents him as lim- 



THE END AXD AIM OF PROVIDENCE. 219 

ited in his resources and dependent in his benevolent 
aims upon rebellion against himself and upon the 
eternal pangs of his own offspring. If the modified 
doctrine seems to avoid one absurdity, it does so to 
involve another scarcely less monstrous. To defend 
the character of God it would limit his sovereignty. 

The view of freedom maintained in this work both 
exalts God's sovereignty and clears it from even the 
appearance of injustice. It shows it to be a moral 
sovereignty Avhich requires neither sin nor its conse- 
quent woes — the sovereignty of an infinite Father 
which upholds and respects the moral freedom of his 
children, and, instead of seeking his own glory or the 
highest good of the universe at the fearful expense of 
countless soul lives, secures both these ends by a plan 
so comprehensive as to provide for the highest good 
of each individual child of his great family as per- 
fectly as though the whole universe were made and 
ordered for him alone. 



XV. 

OUR CONCLUSION CONSERVATIVE AND 
REASONABLE. 



OUTLINE 



More than Meets Objections. 
Progressive but not Revolutionary. 



OUR CONCLUSION CONSERVATIVE AND REASONABLE. 



Ol'r conclusion finds valid support, even regarded 
as a Avorking hypothesis. The superiority of truth 
over error is as great practically as it is intrinsically, 
though this is not always obvious from a surface view. 
It is only burdens upon faith and incentives to zeal 
without knowledge which the democratic conception 
of Christianity surrenders. What it gains we are to 
consider in this and other articles following. 

MORE THAN MEETS OBJECTIONS. 

More and more the objection faces us that a proba- 
tion of such inequality and hard conditions as Chris- 
tianity is supposed to teacli is unreasonable. It is 
impossible in this age of inquiry that this objection 
should not demand attention, and, if not answered, 
become a barrier to faith. It must be admitted that 
it has not been answered. It can be answered only by 
clearing the Christian doctrine of probation from the 
burdens with which mistaken interpretations have 
cumbered it. To show that our j)robation is a blessing, 
til at in essentials it is one of equality, and that for 
securing the great reward — the approval of Heaven — 
its conditions are the best possible, is more than to 
answer objections. It is to establish the Christian 



224 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

doctrine on clear and unassailable ground. Yea, 
more, it is to dispel the whole dark cloud of errors 
under which faith has been groping and reveal Chris- 
tianity as nothing less than the God of light and love 
come down to light up the pathway of our trial-life 
from earth to heaven. 

How in contrast this with the common methods 
of Christian teachers of all schools of thought ! Those 
who have sought to rationalize Christianity have been 
wont to begin with the rejection of probation on the 
alleged ground of its unreasonableness, and they have 
found no place to stop short of complete doctrinal 
revolution, while both branches of the evangelical 
Church, the Calvinian and the Arminian, have held 
the doctrine of probation vaguely and as a mystery, 
and have done their best work in the way of argu- 
ment each in pointing out the doctrinal inconsistencies 
of the other. 

The Calvinists have charged upon the Arminians 
that their view of Christian doctrine was a disjointed 
one — that it was radically at fault in logically exclud- 
ing the great essential of systematic theology, an all- 
embracing divine plan. It claimed a freedom for 
mankind in projecting thought and feeling into action 
independently of each other and of God, which in- 
volved a denial of universal providence and left little 
room for divine administration save in final awards. 
And the very freedom of which it boasted, by its 
own admissions, was freedom but in name, being 



CONCLUSION CONSERVATIVE AND REASONABLE. 225 

swayed indefinitely by surrounding influences, and 
finding no room in such a world of accidents. It 
virtually admitted the eternal destiny of mankind to 
be largely dependent upon circumstances not in their 
control — that thus the doom of countless millions is 
made almost certain. 

The Arminians charged back with confidence that 
tlie Calvinistic notion of divine sovereignty logically 
made God but an infinite mechanic, and the universe 
of matter and mind but a huge mechanism in his 
ahnighty hand, and thus completely crashed out free- 
dom and moral obligation, and made sin but an empty 
word and punishment unmitigated cruelty. 

It cannot be claimed that the charges on either side 
were wholly groundless, so far as they were aimed 
against theories and not against brethren. Meantime 
under the lead of the same Master there has been be- 
tween the two branches of the Church a growing 
spirit of Christian fellowship till they have grown 
into substantial unity of faith. The truth is they 
were both right in what they intended to teach, and 
wrong chiefly in their negatives. They were both 
inadequate in their notions alike of God's supremacy 
and man's freedom. 

The doctrine here maintained is 

PROGRESSIVE WTTHOTJT BEING REVOLUTIONARY. 

It conserves and emphasizes, as we have seen, all that 

bv common consent of the accepted leaders of Chris- 
15 



226 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIAx\nTY. 

tian thought is recognized as essential in orthodoxy. 
Immeasurably liigher and clearer are the conceptions it 
gives us of man, God, probation, providence, character, 
redemption, retribution. It makes more of redemp- 
tion from sin because it exposes the inexcusableness of 
sin. But it shows that the redemption of a man is 
more tlian his recovery from a lapsed state. To re- 
deem a child of the flesh is also to lift him out of 
necessity in the realm of natural law up to the freedom 
of a son of God, and involves the discipline of proba- 
tion and a work of spiritual transformation. Thus 
does it justify the costly outlay of heaven in the 
incarnation and the atonement. Not the surrender 
but the reasonableness of Christian orthodoxy is the 
invincible conclusion. 



XVI. 

EXALTS HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 



OUTLINE 



That which First Concerns Us. 

A Common Error that Tends to Paralysis of Conscience. 

The True Antidote. 

The " Thou's " of the Word Addressed to Man. 



EXALTS HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 



THAT WHICH FIRST CONCERNS US. 

There is no other department of truth which so 
deeply concerns man as that which relates to his respon- 
sibility as a probationer for eternal life. "What a man 
thinks of himself as to his accountability to God is 
properly the first and basis article of liis creed — the 
foundation on which he builds his whole structure of 
religious belief. From the conscience in his own 
breast his thought ascends, if it ascend at all, to the 
being of a God above him,' and his notions of God 
take their mold. Yet probably in no other depart- 
ment is error so prevalent and truth assented to so 
vaguely perceived and so loosely held. A fatalistic 
philosophy which denies the very ground of account- 
ability, freedom, largely permeates secular literature 
alike ancient and modern the world over. And how 
much better is the philosophy long dominant in the 
Christian Church ? The truth is, the Church has thus 
far in her history widely accepted the pagan and 
infidel world as her teacher in philosophy, and has 
tasked her thought to adjust the divine truth in her 
custody to fatalistic theories. Even those who have 
protested against both the philosophy and the theology 



230 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of necessity have yet in their habitual assumptions 
and admissions often fallen into the same popular 
drift of its current phraseology, and have thus uncon- 
sciously half yielded to its sway. 

A COMMON ERROR THAT TENDS TO PARALYSIS OF CON- 
SCIENCE. 

It is "Urged upon Christians as an incentive to 
effort that the eternal prospects of others are in their 
control— a notion that logically surrenders freedom 
and represents the Christian worker as a mediating 
priest between God and his fellow-men^ and tends 
naturally to make both hun and his converts fanatics. 
Children inhale with their breath in liome and school 
and church the notion that their standing with God 
and their salvation here and forever depends largely 
upon others than themselves, and they are quick to 
conclude either that the prayers and influence of 
Christian parents and teachers and pastors are a tide 
upon which they may with tolerable safety hope to 
float into the eternal haven, or that the question of 
their salvation is pretty much one of chance with God 
out of the account, and the chances so fearfully against 
them as to discourage hope and endeavor, and even to 
quench desire. 

The natural effect has been and is a general paraly- 
sis of the Christian conscience. It w^ould not be just 
to affirm degeneracy in Christian zeal. Christianity 
has done much and is doing more and more to en- 



EXALTS HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 231 

throne conscience in lier rightful supremacy. Chris- 
tendom is in this regard far in advance of 
heathendom, and Christians, with all their defects, 
averao;e better than their critics. But it must be con- 
fessed that a high, clear. Christian sense of responsi- 
bility is yet every-where a great want. A disposition 
to shirk responsibility tends to hold the conscience 
down to low standards, w^hile mental indolence, ser- 
vility, and pride unite in preferring an earthy philos- 
ophy on the level and in the compass of their own 
thoughts. 

As a consequence the Christian graces of truthful- 
ness in word and deed, honesty in business, integrity 
to conviction, fidelity to the trusts of life, lack the 
moral atmosphere without which their best develop- 
ment and growtli are impossible. Christians are found 
quoting the fatalistic proverb that man is but a creat- 
ure of circumstances, and are fruitful in apologies for 
their sins — ready to charge their infidelities to the 
account of their ancestors or of their untoward 
surroundings. Yea, great Cliristian doctrines have 
sometimes almost without protest been perverted 
to the service of this error — redemption through 
Christ into a bankrupt act under which the faith- 
less may sin and escape with impunity ; conversion 
into a substitute for a faithful life ; and free grace 
into release from duty and self-sacrifice and an apol- 
ogy for license. 



232 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

THE TRUE AirriDOTE. 

For this prevailing infidelitj within as well as with- 
out the Chnrcli, wliich would undermine the founda- 
tions of responsibility, w^e have the true antidote in 
the Scripture doctrine of probation and the Christian 
philosophy of moral freedom, w^hich place every man 
before God as an individual moral agent: ''What 
mean ye, that ye use this proverb, saying. The fathers 
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are 
set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall 
not have occasion any more to use this proverb. 
Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, 
so also the soul of the son is mine : the soul that sin- 
neth, it shall die. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is 
not equal. Hear now^ ; Is not my way equal? are 
not your ways unequal ? " 

Of course, there is something of truth mixed with 
all the pleas of untruth. Error cannot bear exposure 
in its own baldness, but lurks ever under plausible dis- 
guises. Christians are by divine appointment assigned 
a part in the work of Christianizing their fellow-men 
and educating them for the life to come, and for 
the present life there is much dependent on their 
labors. Theirs is the work of finding and gather- 
ing and developing such as unconsciously wait the 
Master's call — the discovery and polishing of diamonds 
that lie scattered and hidden in all lands. And they 
are richly rew^arded for their toils. The faithful 



EXALTS HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 233 

teacher of faithful pupils knows the joy of meeting 
in after life those who have won success and delight 
to do him honor. But he must become a fool to 
imagine that parents ever thought to suspend the edu- 
cation of their children upon the contingency of his 
readiness to serve them. x\s a modest, reasonable man 
it would be more nal nral for him to fear he was receiv- 
ing credit not his due, and that he had stood in a 
place which otherwise might have been filled by better 
teachers. So the true Christian worker. His is not 
tlie prerogative to open heaven's gate to those against 
whom it would otherwise remain closed forever. But 
it is gloriously true that he is investing his own heart- 
treasures in other lives — laying up treasure in heaven 
to come back to him in the eternal world with large 
increase in the respect and love of all to whom his 
life shall prove a blessing. 

Man is in God's order somewhat a creature of cir- 
cumstances, but, so far as he is such, he is not held 
accountable. Blood and training or want of training 
have much to do with the question of one, two, or five 
talents. They have nothing to do with, our fidelity 
to our own trust. It is just as easy to keep faithfully 
the trust of one as of five talents, and it is just as ac- 
ceptable to God. Children of the Christian covenant 
in the line of godly generations have, indeed, greater 
advantages for development and growth ; but in like 
ratio is more expected of them. Their better outfit 
for life, they should be taught, is not their greater 



234 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

security, but their higher trust. The heavenly Fa- 
tlier loves equally the children of the benighted and 
the depraved. For the salvation of the least, the 
most blighted of all, he gave his own Son as truly 
as though for him alone, and faith need not hesi- 
tate to affirm that, if required, he would repeat 
the sacrifice rather than that the misfortune of birth 
should become to him an occasion of final loss. 

The question of responsibility is a very simple one. 
Requirement is in every case in strict justice meas- 
ured by ability. The Christian giving of a mite, for 
her to whom the mite is all she has, may be as great 
a probational act as the gift by others of millions. 
The conscientious, life-long devotion of a heathen 
wife and mother to the simple duties of her cabin 
liome is as morally grand as that of the Christian 
queen of England to her vast empire ; and who shall 
say she may not find in her lowly sphere the essential 
discipline which may educate her for as high a rank 
in the kingdom of God ? " It is accepted according 
to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath 
not." ^' He that is faithful in that which is least is 
faithful also in much." 

THE THOU'S OF THE WORD ADDRESSED TO MAN. 

It is on this ground that the voice of God comes 
home to each man's conscience in the most direct 
and potent of words, thou. " Thou art the man ; " 
" Thou shalt ; " " Thou shalt not ; " " If thou be wise, 



EXALTS HUMAN RESPOxXSIBILITY. 235 

THOU sbalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, 
THOU alone sbalt bear it;" "Be thou faithful unto 
death ; " " Well done, thou good and faithful serv- 
ant ; " " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." This 
style of address brings every man in his personality 
into the presence of God to stand or fall for himself. 
If he stand approved it is because divine justice and 
reason approve; if condemned it is because the judg- 
ment of God and of an intelligent universe as well as 
his own conscience condemn. 

Our conclusion exposes the fnllacy of all excuses 
for the sin that blights and destroj^s. No man can 
plead tliat the probation of another is more favorable 
than his. If he fail it is his fault, not his misfortune. 
He has ground for neither apology nor complaint. He 
is under the highest obligations of gratitude the 
heavenly Father's love and faitlifulness can place him 
under. His probation, if he is faithful to it, will 
prove an inestimable boon. It is perfectly fair. It 
has no unnecessary risks. It is the best that probation 
admits. Every sinner against the light of this truth 
must be speechless here, and he will be speechless on 
the great judgment-day. 

The acceptance of this truth will clear the Christian 
doctrines of grace from error that burdens and per- 
verts and weakens them, and has often brought them 
into disrepute. It shows the Christian atonement to 
be, not a substitute for a probation, but the redemp- 
tion of the family of man to a probation ; conversion 



236 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to be not tlie consumiiiatioii of life's work, but prep- 
aration for it ; free grace to be not a free passage to 
heaven with nothing more to do on our part, but to 
carry with it high obligations and weighty respojisi- 
bilities. Wlien faith in this trnth shall find clear 
voice in the Christian pulpit and press it will prove 
the unsheathed sw^ord of the Spirit to the consciences 
of men and mark a new era in the progress of Chris- 
tianity in earnest. 

Thus does the conception of the divine administra- 
tion as one of freedom and equality meet a great want 
in the work of moral discipline, in that it liberates 
individual responsibility from vagueness and doubt, 
and shows that it rests on reasonable as well as script- 
ural ground. It places every man where conscience 
and the inspired word place him, alone in his moral 
personality before God. Thus it lays bare the sin for 
which we are held accountable, and condemns it as 
without excuse; and, at the same time, it shows the 
true royalty of moral goodness and affords the highest 
encouragement to the upright soul. 



XVII. 

MEETS THE DEMAND OF FAITH SOUGHT IN THE 
HYPOTHESES OF ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE 
PROBATION. 



OUTLINE. 



An Irrepressible Demand. 

Eternal Hope Revolutionary and Untenable. 

The Future Probation Conflict Restricted to the Calvinistic 

Churches. 
From the Stand-point of Necessity Leads to Universalism. 
Future Probation without Equality Affords No Relief. 
Equality in Probation Better than Answers this Question. 
Progressive Sanctification beyond Death. 
The Suggestion of Probation in Death. 
Equality in Probation alone Assures Faith. 



MEETS THE DEMAND OF FAITH SOUGHT IN THE HYPOTH- 
ESES OF ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 



AN IRREPRESSIBLE DEMAND. 

The feeling of unrest as to our probation exten- 
sively prevailing among intelligent Christians shows 
that faith has not yet found good standing-ground. 
Tlie awful mystery which current notions make pro- 
bation to be is a burden too heavy to be borne, and 
faith turns eagerly to any plausible hypothesis that 
promises relief. Where is the path of progress which 
leads to the rest of faith ? 

The chief recent hypotheses offered in solution of 
the mystery of our probation are two — that of '' eter- 
nal hope," or hope of ultimate life for all in the great 
future, and tliat of future limited probation for those 
whose life here is under depressing conditions. Does 
either of these hypotheses lie in the path of progress 
in Christian faith ? or are they both divergent? They 
are offered in good faith to meet a real difficulty by 
teachers of the Iiighest character, and they are en- 
titled to fair treatment. 

ETERNAL HOPE REVOLUTIONARY AND UNTENABLE. 

'' Eternal hope" has a pleasing aspect, and wins 
favor with many to whom it seems the only altei*na- 



240 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tive to a probation hard and uneven. It differs from 
the older universalism in that it drops the shibboleth 
and encourages diligence rather than begins with 
assurance. 

But this attractive hypothesis is exposed to several 
objections. It quite ignores the law of habit in man 
which tends inevitably to fixedness in character either 
good or bad. Every man is a natural time-piece capa- 
ble of so many heart-beats, so many breaths, and in 
^Nature's order, if Nature is allowed her time, stopping 
at last because made to run no longer. Somewhat so, 
there is reason to conclude, a limited, definite amount 
of accountable action, if probation continues long 
enough, completes its full possible measure, issu- 
ing in a character fortified on every side in integrity 
to God, or in the irretrievable ruin of moral repro- 
bacy. Experience, as far as it goes, confirms this con- 
clusion. Sins of ignorance — irresponsible aberrations 
naturally consequent upon bad birth and evil environ- 
ments, such as drew from the Son of God on the 
cross the prayer of apology for his murderers, " Fa- 
ther, forgive them, for they know not what they do " 
— doubtless are but surface pollutions. The hurt that 
comes from others' faults and mistakes mars but the 
casket, not the soul. From this even death may 
prove a rescue. From the mere taint of bad blood 
the dropping of the vile body will be the soul's escape. 
The sins, if we may call them sins, which reason ex- 
pects from those conceived and born and bred in 



ETERNAL HOPE AiSD FUTURE PROBATION. 241 

moral corruption reason excuses and God pities. But 
the induction of experience tlirougli many generations 
is overwhelming that sin against light and freedom 
and opportunity is sin against hope itself, and works 
death. It is the voice of Vvisdom that cries, " He that 
sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; all they 
that hate me love death.'' We know tliis to be the 
universal tendency liere, and we have u) more reason 
to look for an arrest of this tendency by change of 
worlds than by change of continents. 

That this hypothesis is radical, revolutionary in 
doctrine, carrying with it not simply new interpreta- 
tions of Scripture, but even challenging tlie authority 
of Scripture testimony, is, of course, an objection 
chiefly to Christians known as evangelical. To them 
it would be decisive but for the pressure of difficul- 
ties with which the doctrine as commonly held is 
loaded. We cannot give up what seems to us to be 
Christianity itself. But what shall we do? 

Will the other hypothesis named, that of future lim- 
ited probation for the less favored here, help us ? If it 
will, let us frankly admit the presumption in its favor. 

THE FUTURE PROBATION CONFLICT RESTRICTED TO THE 
CALVINISTIC CHURCHES. 

It should not be overlooked that it is from the 
progressive wing of Calvinistic orthodoxy that the 
suggestion of future probation has come into promi- 
nence. Evidently a suggestion only, not a new 
16 



242 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dogma, was intendecl. But the suggestion has proved 
a disturbing element, and has wrought division and 
sharp antagonism. The conflict, however, at tlie 
widest, has been restricted to the Calvinistic Churclies. 
Of course, the question has not been kept within de- 
nominational bounds. But only in the ranks of mod- 
ern Calvinism has it been treated as a vital question. 
It is in the modern Calvinistic view of Christian 
doctrine and philosophy alone that the question of 
future probational opjjortunity assumes importance. 
In the purely monarchical conception of Christianity 
of the older Calvinism there was scarcely found occa- 
sion for the word probation ; every man was pre- 
sumed to be what he was made to be by the sovereign 
decree of God. In this view the objection to foreign 
missions actually made, that when the Lord wanted 
the heathen converted he could do it without our 
help, was in strict logical consistency. 

But, in the transition from the doctrine of John 
Calvin to the Calvinism of to-day, the monarchical 
conception of Christianity has widely given place to 
the dynamic conception, which regards Christianity 
as a system of moral and spiritual forces for the 
transformation of the children of this world into chil- 
dren of God. In this light Christian work is re- 
garded as God's way of saving his elect. Meantime 
the universal love of God has come into much clearer 
view, and to the advanced wing of the body has be- 
come the central truth and motive of the Christian 



ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 243 

system. The more conservative Calvinists, however, 
still cling to their doctrine of divine sovereignty as 
central in their system of faith, and, as might be ex- 
pected, the suggestion of future probation is sum- 
marily condemned by them as a dangerous heresy, 
" cutting the nerve of Christian missions," and leading 
straight to universalism. 

Upon the pivotal question of freedom none of the 
schools of modern Calvinism have made decisive ad- 
vances. They have all ceased to put tlie negative — 
necessity. But their affirmations of freedom have 
been vague and hesitating. To tliis what is known as 
progressive orthodoxy furnishes not a clear exception. 

It is noteworthy that the eminent Christian teachers 
to whom has fallen the leadership of the new depart- 
ure still subscribe to the Calvinistic creed and cling 
to the name. Doubtless they do this honestly. The 
truth seems to be that, while they have outgrown and 
thrown off theological predestinarianism, they have 
not given up tlie underlying philosophy of the creed 
w^hicli logically makes every man to be the product 
of hereditary and environing influences. Their faith 
takes strong hold of the truth that it must be the 
heavenly Father's will to save all who can be saved, 
and therefore that it must bo in his purpose some- 
where, sometime, to reach all with saving help. It is 
impossible that, with so just a conception of God, 
with no conception of absolute freedom in man, and 
with a dynamic conception of Christianity, there 



244 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

should not arise a demand of faith that, in the case of 
those whose opportunity does not come here, it should 
come in the hereafter. Future probation is a fair 
corollary of liberal Calvinism. Nor is it the last 
corollary. Future probation being accepted, there 
follows by the same pliilosophy a greater deduction. 

FROM THE STAND-POINT OF NECESSITY LEADS TO 
UNIVERSALISM. 

If men are just what heredity and environment 
make tliem it is easy to see the legitimacy of hope 
for all, even confident hope, w^hen there come to 
them the saving environments of a better future. 
Final salvation for all. is not an accepted conclusion ; 
but it w^ill have to be accepted as fairly involved un- 
less men are called of God to a higher freedom in 
probation than any school of Calvinism has distinctl}^ 
avowed. Given a race of men with no freedom which 
may not be controlled by motive appliances, a Chris- 
tianity w^hich consists in perfect motive appliances 
for the salvation of men, and the purpose of w^hic'i is 
to save, and a God wdio w^ould have all men saved, 
and to whom belong the eternal years, and the con- 
clusion of ultimate universal salvation is assured. 

But from the Arminian view of Christian doctrine 
possible future probation for those who find little or 
no moral development here assumes no such impor- 
tance, and leads to no such result. According to self- 
consistent Arminianism requirement is so perfectly 



ETERXAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 245 

adjusted to ability as to amount to essential equality 
in God's dealings with men in tliis life. With pro- 
bation fair and equal for all who are held to its re- 
sponsibilities in every day of the only life of which 
we have knowledge, w^e have no occasion for specula- 
tion as to what may be in the life to come. 

It is quite true that there is in the pulpit to-day 
little direct antagonic-m between teachers of Arminian 
and Calvinian antecedents ; but there is a difference 
amounting to contrast in their " way of putting 
things," and the contrast is yet more marked when 
we go back of the pulpit to the theological lecture- 
room. To the Arminian the freedom of moral 
agency, with the responsibilities which it involves, is 
foundation truth, and his inconsistencies come of his 
departures from thiG truth. His brother whose ante- 
cedents are Calvinistic does not deny freedom. He 
believes in all the freedom he conceives to be possible, 
and on this ground appeals to the consciences of men. 
But in the lecture-room he qualities freedom to the 
zero-point. The self-consistent Arminian addresses 
his hearers with the distinct understanding that, upon 
the question of accepting Christ as their Saviour and 
Master, they must each for himself make his own 
choice. The self-consistent modern Calvinist seeks 
to bring the motive appliances of Christianity to bear 
upon his hearers as a divine instrumentality in the 
control of their wills so as to make the acceptance of 
Christ their choice. 



246 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 



FUTURE PROBATIOIT WITHOUT EQUALITY AFFORDS NO 

RELIEF. 

Let US not mistake the issue before us. For the 
cai^rying out and completing of the work of probation 
begun here and from the first fair and equal, the sug- 
gestion of more time, more room, and more light, in 
some cases, is not unnatural. But as an hypothesis of 
relief future probation without equality in probation is 
of doubtful service. Future probation fails to satisfy 
a true tlieodicy somewhat as Dr. Edward Beecher's 
Conflict of Ages failed. As liis suggestion of pre- 
existence carried back the mystery of sin into an un- 
known past instead of solving it, so future probation 
simply passes over the difficulties of the trial-life into 
an unknown hereafter. Tlie implication of hard con- 
ditions of probation here staggers faith as to any more 
favorable probation in the future. God is no better 
in the kingdom of the dead than of the living, nor 
are the dead made better by transfer to another state. 
If he favor the enlightened, the well-balanced, the 
strong, above the ill-born, the benighted, the weak, 
on the great issue of life here, why not there ? If he 
is capable of such an administration in this life, fear 
for worse conditions before us would quite as natu- 
rally predominate as hope for better. Future proba- 
tion would be worth hoping for only under conditions 
of fairness and equality, conditions we have no reason 
to expect in the hereafter except we find them here. 



ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 247 

And if we find them here faith has no use for a future 
probation as a rectifier. 

It cannot be claimed that a p3rsonal acceptance of 
Christ is exclusively the test of probation. Probation 
is a life-work. The test of probation is fidehtj to 
one's own trust — the one talent of a heathen who has 
heard the voice of God only in his conscience, or the 
five talents of full gospel privileges. Of each indi- 
vidual of the human family it may be said that he 
either has or has not a probation in this life. If he 
lias a probation, whether long or short, it is a fair one 
perfectly adjusted in its requirements to his individual 
case. If he has no probation he enters upon a future 
existence under essentially the same conditions as the 
dying infant. There is no argument for future pro- 
bation for the heathen which will not hold equally in 
the case of all wdio leave us in irresponsible childhood, 
and, by fair implication, in the case of all who lack 
opportunity here to attain moral maturity. 

What the heavenly Father may have in reserve for 
those he takes from our arms in infancy, and others, 
if such there be, who have no probation here, and yet 
others who leave us with what seems to us an incom- 
plete probation, is a question thinking men of to-day 
cannot help asking. But if it seem good to him w^io 
is alike in all worlds to complement probation when 
incomplete here in the morning of the future, it will be 
under the same essential conditions as now. We might 
as well hope for the reign of a more propitious deity 



248 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by crossing the boundary-line between political states 
as for a probation of easier conditions for securing 
the favor of God by passing from tlie present state of 
being to that beyond death even though it should in- 
volve the traversing of the voids of space. Complete 
probation for all would, doubtless, for many in Chris- 
tendom as well as in lieatliendom, extend the trial-life 
beyond death. But equality, as far as probation goes, 
asks no extension. No to-morrow or other world is 
demanded to right any wrongs in God's administra- 
tion here and now. 

Christian orthodoxy has no occasion to fear this 
hypothesis so long as it is held in due subordination 
as but an hypothesis, and the conception of probation 
is clear and just. In the light of absolute freedom 
and equality in probation which squarely antagonizes 
universalism, and perfectly answers its objections, it 
is not revolutionary. Conservatism toward it is Chris- 
tian wisdom. Welcome its agency if it has afforded 
any honest soul escape from the alternative of doubt. 
Must we not admit that Scripture testimony upon this 
question is not so decisive as to assure us? May not 
a possible question have been left open to us here as a 
safety-valve in the emergencies of overpressed faith ? 

EQUALITY IN PROBATION BETTER THAN ANSWERS THIS 

QUESTION. 

It perfectly meets its chief demand, and thus lays 
it on the table to wait its time. There let it rest an 



ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 249 

unanswered question till the Master's call. Assured 
of fairness all the way in life — that each day's 
descending sun bears witness for all who are held ac- 
countable to a day of perfect equality before God on 
tlie one question of his favor — for all unanswered 
questions as to^his plans for us we can wait, if true, in 
serene faith. Better wait than be overconfident. 
We shall not have to wait long. 

But waiting an answer does not mean that we treat 
this question ligbtly as no concern of ours. The 
word and providence of God suggest, and were in- 
tended to suggest, many questions which they do not 
answer. Better for us for the present may be a ques- 
tion than would be the answer, especially an answer 
which might lull us into careless security. "Well, 
doubtless, that the question of future probation will 
not down at our bidding. The question has a prac- 
tical side. Yiew^ed in the light of full consciousness 
of the high trust of freedom in probation, it suggests 
that easy-going Christians may count too much upon 
a peaceful death. Not yet have we all outgrown the 
need of fear as a motive. We are in danger both 
for ourselves and for those we teach of making the 
conditions of the life eternal too easy, forgetting the 
stirring appeals of the word : " Work out your own 
salvation with fear and trembling;" ''Fight the good 
fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life." 

To persuade ourselves and others that heaven is 
sure to us all by the unconditional decree of God 



250 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

were prematurely to cast from us the fear which is 
the beginning of wisdom — to destroy the lower rounds 
of the ladder on which we take our first steps heaven- 
ward. The confident belief that the new birth ended 
probation would rob Christians of a motive greatly 
needed in the forming period of life." Not less un- 
happy the practical influence of tlie notion that a 
hopeful death at the end of a halting life is accepted 
in default of a well-improved probation. The possi- 
bility that, in the pressure of new tests of character 
beyond death, I may find myself weak where with 
greater vigilance I might have been strong offers a 
healthful motive to diligence. 

Assurance that our probation, long or short, is every 
day fair and equal meets a prime want of faith. 
Whether our probation ends always at death is a ques- 
tion which may it not be well should face us to the 
end ? 

Dr. Charles A. Briggs's doctrine of 

PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFTCATION BEYOND DEATH 

appears to differ from the " continued probation " 
hypothesis of the Andover professors and others only 
in that, consistently with his predestinarian premises, 
he finds in fact no room for probation proper either 
in this life or in the life to come. If I understand 
him, the gradual work of sanctification he believes to 
be carried forward in a future life is essentially the 
same as progressive sanctification in this life. Just 



ETERXAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 251 

as the work goes on when the disciple changes con- 
tinents, so alike when he changes worlds. Dr. 
Briggs stands on the Westminster platform of doc- 
trine according to which, not the less that in some 
j^articulars he interprets liberally, the new birth is in 
God's own time assured to all the elect by sovereign 
grace, and is always the point at which sanctification 
begins, and from which with absolute certainty it is 
carried forward to perfection. It is surely not much 
of a heresy in the eminent professor to think it more 
probable that this work of progressive transformation, 
when not completed here, continues after death than 
that all disciples alike are made instantly perfect at 
death. No hint of future probation lurks in self- 
consistent predestinarianism for the good reason that 
predestinarianism logically excludes probation. 

The trouble with Dr. Briggs's theology, as his critics 
vao^uelv see, is that the real advance of his thouocht as 
to the character of God and his equal love for the 
whole family of man carries with it reasonable expec- 
tation of equal provision for the salvation of all, and, 
therefore, on the necessitarian theory, leads straight 
to the conclusion of assured salvation for all. His 
nobler conception of God and his Christ-like charity 
are perfectly in keeping with the doctrine of absolute 
freedom in man to choose for himself upon account- 
able issues, and in highest degree emphasize the re- 
sponsibility of freedom ; but they do not at all accord 
with the strange notion that any part of the human 



252 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTUNITY. 

family are given existence under a liorrible decree of 
inevitable and irreversible damnation. If all nien are, 
and will forever be, what the decree of Heaven makes 
them, how can a devout, broad-minded Christian 
scholar fail to welcome as logic illy conclusive, as well 
as a demand of faith, .the fair generalization that it 
must be his purpose ultimately to make them all 
good ? 

The Rev. Joseph Cook's 

SUGGESTION OF PROBATION IN DEATH 

the revelation and acceptance of Christ and the work 
of spiritual transformation after the soul may have 
become oblivious to earth — deserves notice in this 
connection because he is an able and accepted leader 
of the conservative orthodoxy which rejects the hy- 
pothesis of future probation as too radical. Though 
few of Mr. Cook's friends may receive his suggestion 
as satisfactory, and he himself prudently offers it only 
as an hypothesis, none the less clearly does it place 
Mr. Cook on the list of those whose faith in God and 
man outreaches the scope of commonly accepted views, 
and calls eagerly for explanation. And in this he 
doubtless represents the large remainder of thinking 
Christian men. 

Moreover, there may be a grain of truth in the new 
hypothesis. Mr. Cook would not encourage the 
faithless rejecters of Christ to hope for salvation in 
death any more than would those vyholook for oppor- 



ETERNAL HOPE AND FUTURE PROBATION. 253 

tunity beyond death for sncli as are not reached by 
saving help here favor neglect or delay in those who 
have here probational advantages. But it is not an 
unnatural supposition that those who under clouds 
have cherished hi life what Dr. Whedon calls "the 
spirit of faith," Professor Parks " the love of uni- 
versal goodness," and Mr. Cook " the essential Christ 
of conscience," may in the light that breaks upon the 
soul in death find to their supreme joy the real Christ 
as their Saviour. But that, if it actually occur, will 
not be compressing the work of life into tlie hour of 
death. Rather it will be the blossoming out in the 
light of heaven of a life which has been essentially 
true to its probation. 
Doubtless 

" There are swift hours in life, strong rushing hours, 
That do the work of tempests in their might." 

But these are the hours of great opportunity when 
life is at its flood-tide, not at its low ebb. It is not 
reason that the cliief work of life itself should be 
crowded into the half-unconscious hours of death. 
From wdiat we know of deatii the departing soul 
seems passive rather than active in a responsible sense. 
If its visions may with qualification be accepted as in- 
dexing the character, tliey have probably nothing to 
do in shaping character itself. 

But the objections to these hypotheses are likely to 
seem weak if we stop with objections. The cham- 
pions of pulpit and press have tried their broadsides 



254 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

on thein, and the chief effect has been to call into new- 
prominence the main difficulty. 

EQUALITY HSr PROBATION ALONE ASSURES FAITH. 

The only successful reply must be the offer of 
something better. The truth is, change of position 
upon the question of human probation has become a 
demand of faith. Does not faith point to equality in 
probation, with the best conditions whicli probation 
admits, as alone meeting this demand, and lience as 
the true position of Christian theology ? Can Christian 
faith fail to recognize this as none other than the basis 
principle in the divine administration — the ways of 
God are equal ? To what conceivable objection from 
a rational view is this doctrine exposed ? What 
defense can be asked for it stronger than its own 
reasonableness ? 



XVIII. 

FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



OUTLINE. 



An Incentive that Chills. 
Essentials to the Missionary Spirit. 
Sympathy with Christ the Key-note. 
Peter's Enlargement for Missionary Work 
The Great Missionary from Heaven. 



FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



AN INCENTIVE THAT CHILLS. 

Many good people still regard the inhabitants of 
the heathen world, four fifths of the human family, 
numbering a thousand millions, as under conditions 
almost certain to issue in eternal ruin, and the Chris- 
tian missionary as somehow a priest stepping between 
them and God to save those who but for his media- 
tion God could not or would not save. To those who 
fail to see how near so low a conception of God as 
this notion implies comes to the utter unfaith of 
blank atheism this terrible thought may seem to fur- 
nish a powerful motive to missionary effort. 'No 
wonder unbelievers marvel that it fails to stir the whole 
Church with restless zeal to make the rescue of the 
perishing the one business of life. Doubtless Chris- 
tians marvel, too, at their own strange inconsistency. 
The truth is, the breach is not between faith and 
works. There is no element of faith in this unreason- 
able notion, and it offers no motive to intelligent 
Christian endeavor. It is in its very nature chilling 
to tlie true missionary spirit. The zeal it awakens 
lacks constancy and the warmth of love. It is the 
transient flame of fanaticism that spends itself in mak- 



258 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ing proselytes with but scant result in tlie way of 
Cliristianizing. 

It is this very conviction that the eternal destiny of 
the heathen is contingent upon their priestly offices 
which fires the zeal of Jesuit missionaries and has 
sometimes led them to heroic self-sacrifice ; but, as a 
rule, they have carried with them little evangelizing 
power. The low conception of God and man involved 
in this belief never can inspire an intelligent mission- 
ary zeal. Those who accept it without thought may, 
it is true, in the inspiration of higher motives, in spite 
of it, be successful missionary workers. But the 
legitimate tendency of this absurd notion is to convert 
those w^ho make it their leading motive into frenzied 
fanatics likely to do more harm than good. 

This incentive, so much depended upon by some, is 
vicious alike — subjectively in its influence upon the 
Church as a missionary body, and objectively in the 
impression it gives the heathen themselves of the 
Christian faith. Says Whedon in the chapter already 
referred to on the " Equation of Probational Advan- 
tages : " " Bold assertions in missionary speeches and 
sermons that all the w^orld is damned in mass never 
quicken the pulse of missionary zeal. On the contrary, 
tliey ever roll a cold reaction upon every feeling 
heart and every rational mind. Our better natures 
revolt, and, alas! a gush of skepticism is but too apt in 
consequence to rise in the public mind." 

Of the more intelligent among the heathen, the 



FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 259 

class first to be readied by the gospel message, a suc- 
cessful missionary in China for many years testifies 
that they will reject with scorn a religion which 
teaches by implication the damnation of all their an- 
cestors. 

ESSENTIALS TO THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 

The essentials of a true missionary spirit are three: 
1. A just conception of God as a universal loving Fa- 
ther, absolutely impartial in his administration; 2. A 
just conception of man as a free, responsible agent 
made to be a child of God, and to this end in need of 
a new and spiritual birth ; 3. Supreme love to Christ, 
the great missionary Saviour and Leader, and the 
Christ-like love toward all men which brings us into 
sympathy witli him in his saving work. 

SYMPATHY WITH CHRIST THE KEY-NOTE. 

Sympathy with the world's Saviour in his mission 
of love to our world is the key-note of the missionary 
spirit, as the great leaders in evangelizing w^ork have 
borne witness. Says Paul, ^^The love of Christ con- 
straineth us ; " " He died for all, that they which live 
should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto 
him who died for them, and rose again." Says Wes- 
ley, '^ True Christian zeal is no other than the flanie 
of love." Said the late Dr. Mark Hopkins, " Love 
for the Saviour is the motive-power of missions. 
Where this motive-power is not missions will not be 



260 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

established or will fall into decay. This love for the 
Saviour must be our hope and strength. We have a 
personal Leader whom we love and whom we follow, 
who loved this cause well enough to die for it, and 
will carry it forward to its consummation." 

All these essentials to the missionary spirit — the 
noblest conceptions of God and man, and of God's 
plan to save men, and affording, therefore, the highest 
inspiration to love for both — are found in the view of 
Christian doctrine here maintained — essential equality 
in probation for all, and for all the best probation 
possible. 

"We do not expect the waters of a stream to be 
purer nor to rise higher than the fountain-head, nor 
can we reasonably expect man's love for his fellow- 
men to rise above the level of Ms conception of God's 
love for them. It is impossible that even a Christian's 
heart should open to the command in its full breadth, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," till his 
faith takes hold of the truth that God loves all equally 
and shows his equal love by placing the crowm of life 
equally within the reach of all. Precept is weak till 
seconded by the illustration and inspiration of ex- 
ample. Could a father consistently demand of his 
son a higher standard than he accepts for himself? 

The Jews' conception of God far surpassed the no- 
tions of divinity current in contemporary nations. But 
that the God they worshiped is equally the Father of 
all men and made all to be one brotherhood is a truth 



FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 261 

of whicli even the inspired sages cauglit but glimpses. 
Their estimate of the dark woi'ld of mankind was too 
low for successful effort for their conversion. Tlie 
first need of the chosen twelve after tlie baptism of fire 
to prepare them to enter upon the carrying out of 
their great commission was an enlargement of their 
faith in God and man. The Jew must become a 
Christian. The zeal of a mere propagandist or patron 
is sure to be unnatural, if not feeble and spasmodic. 
It may for a time make converts rapidly, but it fails 
to make them children of light. A true missionary 
spirit is the love of a disciple and a brother fanned 
to a flame by the Master's command and lead. 

PETER^S ENLARGEMELTT OF FAITH. 

It was a glorious surprise to Peter tliat tlie God of 
Abraham and his chosen seed had made of one blood 
all the nations of men, and was alike the God of Jews 
and Gentiles. Peter did not find out this truth by 
his own searching. Nor did simple inspiration, the 
calling of his owm mental faculties into their highest 
exercise, enable him to see it. It lies too far beneath 
the surface view of human condition to be aj)parent 
even to inspired vision. It came to Peter as a revela- 
tion — a vision of the glory of God, in the radiance of 
which he discovered the image of God in every hu- 
man soul, and recognized all men as his brethren. 
This grand uplift of faith was to him the birth of a 
new joy, and the attainment of a new power, and as 



262 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the result liis whole spiritual being felt the thrill of a 
new life. It set him free from the bondage of Jewish 
prejudice and made him a larger man, and gave him 
a juster view of liis calling and prepared him for 
grander success. What the discovery that we are all 
of one family and the one God is our common Father 
did for Peter it will do for every man who will lay 
hold of it with like faith and take it to his heart with 
like fervor. It will not make a bad man a good man. 
I^^othing can do that but the surrender of his own 
will to the will and grace of God. But it will make 
every good man a happier, brighter, stronger man, 
and his life in every relation a greater blessing. At 
the same time it will prove in his estimate of his 
fellows-men a grand leveler upw^ard and Godward. 
It cannot fail to make the spirit of caste and oppres- 
sion in every form odious to him. It will make 
every other man greater in his eye. Not that it will 
serve as a magnifying-glass to present an exaggerated 
view. But it will clear his own mental vision of the 
film of error, and remove the veil of false distinctions, 
and reveal his brother-man to him more nearly as he 
is and as he is seen in the eye of the great Father. 
He will be better able to look through the fogs and 
mists and blight which obscure not a few gems of 
character as pure as any w^hich shine in the light of 
heaven. The heathen w^orld will no longer be to 
him but a forest waste, so many square miles of rep- 
robate humanity fit only for the fires of an etei-nal 



FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 263 

Gehenna. But under every repulsive lieatlien garb 
faitli will assure him the Fatlier sees a soul as dear 
to him and one that may have a future as bright as 
that of Moses or Paul. Much larger may seem to him 
the number yet in the irresponsible ^ undeveloped 
Dispensation, distinguished by Dr. Whedon as '' ap- 
parently entitled to the moral immunity of infancy." 
But the vv^orld will have for him no reprobates and no 
dwarfs in possibility but those who have made them- 
selves such by faithlessness to equal opportunity with 
the tallest saints of God. As the true artist sees in 
the marble block rough from the quarry the perfect 
statue of his own ideal, so will he behold in every 
child of misfortune, dwarfed by birth, weak from 
neglect, or maimed and hardened by abuse, the pos- 
sibilities of a full-grown son of God sure to find his 
opportunity for bright, complete unfolding. 

The Christian ideal of universal brotherhood will 
have perfect realization in the eternal kingdom of 
God, when all that is reprobate shall have been sep- 
arated from the good and cast away. We are taught 
to pray, " Our Father, who art in heaven, thy king- 
dom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in 
heaven." The harmony of all tongues voicing the 
faith and purpose of all hearts in this prayer would 
be universal brotherhood here — the annexation of 
earth to heaven. The enthronement of this faitli in 
anj^ heart will make it the heart of a brother and 
prepare its possessor to do his best a brother's part. 



264 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The brighter outlook of the Church on her great field 
is proving an immense practical gain to the mission- 
ary cause. To liis cliaritable suggestions as to th.e 
future prospects of the benighted Dr. Whedon hap- 
pily adds : " Our more favorable view of tlie heathen 
condition is a strong incentive rather tlian a damper 
to the missionary spirit." " The missionary wlio goes 
forth into lieathen lands goes, in a great degree, on a 
tour of discovery. Pie goes to find the men who, 
tried by the test of a presented Saviour, shall be 
found freely willing to exercise the spirit of faith 
and righteousness. As the philosopher applying the 
magnet to a heap of sand and iron filings finds that 
the metallic particles will adhere to the loadstone 
while the sands lie quiet in their own inertness, so 
the missionary rightfully presenting the cross shall 
find it to operate as a test to decide whose wills and 
purposes may render and prove them the true metal." 

THE GREAT MISSIdsTARY FROM HEAVEN. 

How perfectly in sympathy are these sentiments 
with the words of the great Missionary from heaven 
to earth, whose heart never forgot to go out after his 
ungathered ones and hold them with his disciples 
in like strong embrace of faith and love : " Other 
sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I 
must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there 
shall be one fold, and one Shepherd." " Neither pray 
I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe 



FOSTERS THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 265 

on me tlirougli tlieir word.*' Again, to Paul in a 
vision halting before besotted Corinth his words are 
of like import : " Be not afraid, but speak and hold 
not thy peace ; for I am with thee, and no man shall 
set on thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people in 
this city." 

It is grace that is bringing the Church nearer to 
the heart of Christ. By the development of a more 
spiritual type of piety she is beginning to know God 
as the equal Father of all men ; and thus deeper than 
the surface play of our philosophizing there has been, 
by the power of the Spirit of God, an onwa-rd drift 
of faith that has brouglit Christian workers more into 
sympathy with the world's Redeemer. Faith pierces 
overshadowing clouds, and rejoices in the assurance 
that a God of infinite love, the same God who loves 
us and our children, reigns for every benighted child 
of humanity as truly and distinctly as though he were 
the only child bearing the Father's image and every 
thing had been made for him alone. Our faith in 
our benighted brethren, and the inspiration of our 
Father's and our Saviour's faith in them and love for 
them, kindles our love to a holy fiame, and we go 
out to rescue them from their degradation because we 
love them as our Father's children, our Saviour's un- 
gathered ones, our own brethren. The more faith we 
have in them, and in God's love for them, the more 
eager shall we be to bring them out of darkness and 
bondage into the light and freedom of God's children. 



260 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

In God's order from the beginning a living spirit- 
ual faith has pioneered in the progressive develop- 
ment of trntli. The day when by this divine pathway 
of progress the Church shall have become so well ac- 
quainted with God as to be incapable of doubt that 
equality is enthroned as a universal law in the very 
heart of his plan will be the dawn upon our world of 
a new and brighter era of advance and victory to the 
kingdom of God. Christianity is a plan of salvation 
as perfect as its divine Author. The nearer the 
Church comes to a perfect faith in all its perfect pro- 
visions to save all who are willing to be saved, or can 
be made willing without taking from them their free- 
dom, the nearer will she come to complete success in 
her work. 



XIX. 

GIVES US THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF THE WORK 
OF EDUCATING MEN. 



OUTLINE. 



To Educate the Man to Put the Man in Possession of Himself. 
Suggestions : 

1. Our conclusion makes clear the end to be sought in education. 

2. Shows religion to be the vital principle in the work of educating 

men. 
3 Shows that the man to be educated must bear the decisive part. 

4. Brings into clear light the truth that to educate men we must 

address the manly side of our youth. 

5. Suggests the wisdom of restricting compulsory education to irre- 

sponsible childhood, and the unwisdom of promotion in the 
courses of Higher Education except upon the conditions of faith- 
ful and successful application to study. 

6. It clearly follows that we should open the way to all classes to 

the highest educational advantages. 



GIVES US THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF THE WORK OF 
EDUCATING MEN. 



The need of moral and religious as well as intel- 
lectual culture is plain enough and is often enough 
affirmed ; but the place which the ethical principle 
and the inspiration of religion hold in the work of 
educating men has not been made clear. Indeed, 
only with a small minority of parents and teachers 
has the education of men become a well-defined pur- 
pose. It is scholars, ministers, lawyers, doctors, book- 
makers, gentlemen, most of all money-getters, that we 
are chiefly seeking to make of our boys. The expla- 
nation is obvious. If man is only a thing, as many by 
implication, if not avowedly, teach, then to make him 
a polished, useful instrument is the best we can do 
with him. So long as we have prevailing indefiniteness 
on the basis question of freedom in man a just concep- 
tion of the work of educating men is impossible. The 
notion of responsibility without absolute freedom 
spreads its own vagueness over the whole question of 
educating men. A Newton in intellectual grasp 
without freedom would rank at zero when compared 
with a man free to make choice for himself between 
the right and the wrong, to build a character of his 
own, to hold communion w4th his Maker, and to live 



270 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and grow forever. It is freedom tliat marks the 
transition from the lower, narrow woi'ld of tlie tran- 
sient and tlie perisliing to the liigher, boundless world 
of the sons of God. 

What is the man to be educated? is the primary 
question to be answered before we are ready to con- 
sider the work to be done in educating him. A man 
has bodily form, animal life, intellectual faculties. He 
is the most highly organized and intelligent of ani- 
mals. Is that all? ''Yes," answer, in substance, a 
class of scientists, with amazing assurance. But if 
that be all the word education is superfluous. There 
is nothing in the boy to be educated. All he needs is 
the growth that comes of good fe3dingand plenty of 
room, the discipline that follows skillful training and 
shaping to a comely pattern under the hand of a 
master. To do all this for a boy would be to do fur 
him a great thing if it were not so far below what 
ought to be done. The transformation of an uncon- 
scious infant into a mere intellectual prodigy without 
moral personality would only be a change akin to the 
transmutation of rough ore from the mountain into 
the finest steel watch-springs. As an instrument one 
Caesar is mightier than an army of millions of even 
adult infants. To mold clay into the form of a man 
is something. To develop the babe into the physical 
proportions and strength of a man is a good deal of a 
task, and may well be regarded as one of the essentials 
in the work of education. To train the physical man 



THE WORK OF EDUCATIXG MEN. 271 

and subject liiiu to the ready service of a master at 
crack of whip or beat of drum would be a good deal 
more if man were made to be the tool of a master. A 
vastly higher undertaking is it to develop and disci- 
pline and furnish tlie intellectual man. But all tliis 
you may do for a child and yet have as the result only 
a finely adjusted instrument. And tliat is all that 
conld be reasonably looked for if man were only an 
intelligent animal. But more than that surely man 
was made to be, and ought to be, and education should 
help him to become. 

By no means would it be just to conclude that 
nothing is accomplished in our schools in the way of 
educating men. The inbreathing, vitalizing Spirit is 
every-where making the most of our imperfect work 
for the education of our children. Moreover, despite 
inadequate notions of education our boards of teachers 
have their full proportion of men and women who are 
inspired of Heaven for their mission and are building 
better than they know. Inspired souls always out- 
reach the narrowness of artificial creeds and systems, 
and they are found in the primary and the little coun- 
try school as well as in the seminary and the univer- 
sity. Such educational workers wherever they are 
found are multiplying the value of all true lives that 
come under their influence many fold — how many 
fold who shall estimate? 

But with due acknowledgment of exceptional 
excellence here and there it is no injustice to say that 



2 72 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ill the closing decenninm of the nineteentli century 
low ideals yet dominate in many of our schools of all 
grades, and they are often absurdly mechanical in 
their aims and methods. But what more can be 
hoped for so long as vague conceptions as to the per- 
sonality and freedom of man prevail? It is only 
w^hat might be expected that we are doing a larger 
business in producing machine men than we are in 
educating the well-rounded, strongly developed, manly 
men who are every-where wanted. 

Professional training — theological, legal, medical, 
pedagogical, military, commercial — is doubtless essen- 
tial to the highest success in special callings ; but even 
in the professional schools— need it be said ? — the man 
should be placed before the instrument. Better look 
out for the man if the professor has to look out for 
himself. 

TO EDUCATE THE MAN IS TO PUT THE MAN IN POS- 
SESSION OF HIMSELF. 

To do our part in this work we must study God's 
method in the evolution of manhood and work under 
his lead. To give the child opportunity to become a 
man whose faculties of mind are all powers and whore 
powers are all possessions is the heavenly Father's 
purpose, and to this end he is constantly working 
through all appropriate agencies. We can work with 
him to this end only as he works in us and by us. 
Tlie freedom of self-control which distinofuishes true 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 273 

inaiiliood comes by the inspiration of the Spirit and 
tlie enthronement of conscience. ''The fear of tlie 
Lord is the beginning of wisdom" is the starting-point 
in the education of man. 

To consider our question intelligently we must 
sharply distinguish the work that may be done for the 
child and is done to best advantage while yet he is 
irresponsible from that which remains to be done 
after responsibility begins. During the former period 
the child is solely the product of hereditary and en- 
vironing influences. It is the child, not the man, 
that is the subject of educational appliances. So far 
the work of the teacher is that of an artist with such 
skill as he may possess shaping plastic natures to the 
pattern of his own ideal. 

We properly speak of the great possibilities of the 
child. But he has no possibilities independently. 
Food, clothing, nursing, teaching, training are the 
conditions in the trust of parents and teachers upon 
which he may come to physical and intellectual ma- 
turity. During the years of irresponsibility he is 
absolutely what conditions not of his own choosing 
make him by the sure working of uniform law, and 
such he must continue throughout life if he were made 
to be nothing more than a physical and intellectual 
being and only earthly helps were provided for him. 
But the education of the man is more than the process 
of natural development. The mere child of eartli, 

however perfectly his faculties may be unfolded, is but 

18 



274 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a tiling of necessity instead of an educated man. The 
educated man is tlie man developed according to the 
lieavenly Father's ideal and in the atmosphere of his 
presence. 

We must not lose sight of the work of the Spirit in 
the child before he has grown to capacity for moral 
personality, freedom, and character* Childhood is in 
God's plan a religions institution. We are conj- 
manded to bring up our children in the nurture of the 
Lord ; and if w^e do this they may very early, doubt- 
less long before they come to moral accountability, 
begin to have a child-consciousness of God. Spiritu- 
ally, the irresponsible child is yet in embryo. Will 
the statement be thought strange that to educate the 
man the child must be born of God into a new life? 
That is strictly and philosophically true. " Ye must 
be born again" is the higher law in the education of 
men. The new birth of the Gospel was not an after- 
thought for the restoration of the fallen man, but in 
the order of constitutional law it is a great essential to 
fully developed manhood. 

It is not within the scope of this article to treat at 
length of the application of this doctrine in the prac- 
tical work of the schools. But a few suggestions seem 
pertinent. 

1. Our conclusion immensely exalts the conception 
of education and makes clear the end to be sought. 
The term education is the highest of a series of terms 
each one of which expresses some specific object to be 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 275 

attained. We speak not of educating, but of con- 
structing^ an engine. When a stream of water is 
turned into a new channel and made to propel machin- 
ery we do not call it an educated stream, but we 
speak of it as applied to out use. When a field 
under the hand of intelligent industry is made to pro- 
duce an abundant harvest we do not say it is an edu- 
cated, but a cultivated^ field. Bringing into our 
service the strength and agility of the horse we do 
not call educating, but training^ the horse. In con- 
structing the engine, in applying to our use the waters 
of the stream, in cultivating the field, and in training 
the horse, their several powers are simply brought 
into requisition as means to an end. They are not 
personal actors, but mere instrumentalities. Each of. 
these terms denotes the preparation of its respective 
object for fulfilling its design. So also the education 
of a man is the bringing out of his powers and quali- 
fying him to accomplish the purpose of his being. 
But the word education is applied exclusively to man, 
and is distinguished in its application to that which 
differentiates the man. Now, in what particular is it 
tliat man differs from all other orders of created being 
with which we are acquainted ? Certainly it is not 
in physical strength. Is it in intelligence ? The in- 
telligence of man is immeasurably superior. Still, 
the brute has some intelligence. Both exhibit sagacity, 
though in different degrees. But the sagacity that 
sees at once the best path or the best point of attack 



276 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

or defense is not properly reason. Reason, like edu- 
cation, is a word of high import, lleason is personal, 
self-controlled thinking. The mental activity and 
foresight awakened in the emergencies of life may 
be merely accidental both in the case of the man 
and of the brute. Circumstances may act mechan- 
ically upon the faculties of both. The result incoii- 
testably proves the existence of intelligence, perhaps 
we may say of mind, but not of reason proper in the 
man any more than in the brnte. Reason is not the 
mere mechanical awakening of the mind by contact 
with something external ; but in its true sense it is 
the free outreaching of the mind itself in its own 
personality. The grand distinction in the mind of 
man is this royal freedom to use his own powers 
in the pursuit of his own chosen purpose. The 
education of the man, then, is not a mechanical opera- 
tion, the literal drawing out of faculties that exist 
in given dimensions upfolded in the mind, but it 
is the free expansion and outspringing of the man 
himself as a personal actor loyal to the right. The 
intellectual faculties may be drawn out and disci- 
plined, but the man cannot be said to be educated till 
in the right use of his powers he becomes their con- 
scious possessor, with them to work out his destiny 
and leave his own chosen impress on the world. 

2. Our conclusion shows religion — including in this 
term both tlie inspiration from above and personal 
integrity to the high trusts — to be not a means of 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 277 

form or result of education, but from first to last to 
be the vital principle in the work of educating men. 
The man does not begin to be educated till he begins 
to be spiritually vitalized. All you can do for your 
pupil before this is on a lower plane. Without relig- 
ion you may succeed, though at great disadvantage, in 
developing and training him physically and mentally 
and making him as the tool of party or passion very 
effective. Tea, even wliile he is yet a child you may 
do better by him than this. Give him the nurture 
of a Christian home and school, and God will work 
by you in insuring for him the best outfit for the 
trust of probation. But not till he makes choice of 
that which he sees to be morally worthy and becomes 
a personal actor in well-doing does the education of 
the man in distinction from the nurture and training 
of the child begin. The work of educating men 
worthy to be called men — men whose lives will 
amount to any thing — is the work of character-build- 
ing in which God is acknowledged as the Master- 
builder. 

It does not follow that no one can do any thing in 
the way of attaining personal moral worth till he 
becomes the conscious follower of the historic Christ. 
Though but a minority have heard the name of Christ 
the Christ himself knows the names of the very least 
of his Father's family, and he reveals himself spirit- 
ually to every one whom he holds to the responsibili- 
ties of probation. The Christ of conscience is none 



278 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

other than the real Christ, and to wliomsoever he 
comes as Redeemer comes at the same time proba- 
tional and educational opportunity. The Redeemer 
is at the same time the great Teacher and Educator. 

3. Our conchision further shows that in the educa- 
tion of the man the man to be educated must for him- 
self in tlie right use of liis freedom bear tlie decisive 
part, and that the work of the teacher is that of a 
guide and helper. Real advance in the path to man- 
hood comes only at tlie price on the pupil's own part 
of morally earnest endeavor. Eminently wholesome 
in its influence npon him is the clear consciousness of 
tliis fact. Well may he regard the faithful improve- 
ment of educational opportunity as a religious duty. 
Without this nothing that the schools can do for him 
will make a man of him. But with this the decree 
of Heaven and the tuition of the great Teacher assure 
his ultimate success. 

There is reason for caution not to do for even the 
willing student that which must be done by himself 
in order that it may be of any real advantage to him. 
Too much help in effect is hinderance. He alone is 
the true educator w^ho inspires his pupils to self-reli- 
ant thought and worthy aim ; he alone is a successf nl 
student who has mastered the high art of making such 
thought and aim his supreme delight. 

A word is in place as to the proper use of authority 
in the work of education. Obedience as a moral 
principle to power rightfully above him is the first 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 279 

lesson to be learned by the boy wlio aspires to become 
a man. But it is bad use of authority to project it 
at every turn in tlie face of the student. Freedom 
witliin reasonable limits is a just demand of responsi- 
bility. To hedge in our youth with needless artificial 
requirements tends to repress and dwarf rather than 
educate them. It is their right to do as they have a 
mind to as far as the}^ are minded to do what is proper. 
All the liberty they prove themselves capable of using 
w^isely is the right of young and old, and is essential 
to their best development. It follows, as progressive 
educators are strongly recommending, that, after the 
foundation-work of the preparatory schools has been 
faithfully done, the student should have reasonable 
margin to elect between well-arranged courses of study, 
and that this margin should broaden with advancement 
and increased capacity to judge for himself. 

4. Our conclusion brings into clear light the pri- 
mary truth so often overlooked, that to educate men 
we must address the manly side of our youth ; in 
more definite terms, we must cultivate in them love 
for truth and teach them with upright purpose to 
search and think and act for themselves, as well as to 
learn what they may from others. In doing this it 
exposes the folly and injustice of those who mistake 
managing and cramming their pupils for teaching and 
educating them. Tact in dealing with students whose 
physical life is at flood-tide, but who have not yet 
strength of character, is entitled to the premium it is 



280 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sure to win when it is connected with fidehty and skill 
in educational work ; but in the absence of these higher 
qualities it is worthless. The government detective 
may have to work for a time on the w^eak side or the 
mean side of tlie criminal he is seeking to arrest and 
convict. He is, first of all, a skillful manager of the 
kind of characters he has to deal w^ith. In like 
manner may the military leader in a good cause seek 
to defeat an enemy. If the teacher have a criminal or 
an enemy for a pupil he may for the moment be justi- 
fied in treating him as such. But the sensible teacher 
will be slow to judge his wayward pupils harshly. 
Many of our youth are wild and morally but little 
developed ; some are debased as the natural conse- 
quence of bad birth and evil surroundings. But there 
are no very wicked boys and girls. What our school 
rogues and shirks and dullards need is pure moral 
atmosphere, wholesome vigilance, authority firmly yet 
wisely and gently exercised, and, most of all, the 
inspiration of teachers of high nioral worth as well as 
of intellectual elevation. If w-e succeed in helping oar 
pupils to attain true greatness it will be by working 
in the spirit of Him of whom one of old affirmed, 
'' Thy gentleness hath made me great." Only those 
who have grown to maturity and have abused or 
neglected life's opportunity have become morally rep- 
robate. It is criminal prostitution of his calling w^hen 
the teacher in habitual distrust of his pupils makes 
bluffing or crowding or wheedling his chief method 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 281 

in dealino; with tlieni. If we take our vouth on their 
weak side, or their mean side, our influence, as far as 
it goes, will tend to make tliem weak men or mean 
men. To educate manly men we must awaken manly 
aspirations in our youth. 

5. Our conclusion suggests the wisdom of restrict- 
ing compulsory education either by State or parental 
authority, excepting that which is distinctively indus- 
trial, to the period of irresponsible childhood, and the 
unwisdom of promotion in the courses of higher edu- 
cation except upon the two reasonable conditions — 
moral worthiness and faithful and successful applica- 
tion to study. To require the work of the higher 
schools of those who lack capacity is in justice to them, 
and to admit any to advantages they will not try to 
improve is injustice to those who furnish the m^eans. 
When our youth come to such development as to 
enable them to judge responsibly on the question — 
which upon an average probably is not earlier than 
sixteen years — it is in the order of Heaven that they 
begin to have something to say as to their future. 
Between the fidelity to duty which involves self-con- 
trol and base surrender to low desire each one must 
make choice for himself, and upon his choice depends 
absolutely the decision whether the seminary, the 
college, and the university will help to make his life 
a blessing or a curse. To drag the persistently in- 
dolent and vicious through the halls of learning comes 
near being tlie worst thing we can do for tliera or 



282 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

witli them. Education opens the way to true man- 
liood only to the willing and obedient, and to such 
should schools of the higher grades be limited. 

But, let it be repeated, we should not be in haste to 
condemn our youth as unworthy or incompetent 
because we find them as God made them, boys and 
girls as yet abounding more in physical life than in 
intellectual and moral strength, and therefore in need 
of growth and taming and training as well as educat- 
ing. To give them first muscle and nerve and good 
blood is God's method in laying the foundations of 
strong manhood and womanhood. ''I am trying to 
make a man of my boy, and I expect to find there is 
work in it," was the response of a wise mother to 
words of sympathy from one who deemed her 
task a hard one. Children should not be blamed 
for being children. Ability to answer as to what 
is riglit according to the catechism is not identical 
with power to choose the right against natural in- 
clination. The power of self-control that carries 
with it moral accountability is not a natural result 
of development and intelligence. It comes down 
from God, and probably not as early as is commonly 
supposed. 

If w^e have little success in teaching the children 
and youth intrusted to our care doubtless the fault is 
often in us. Patience, perseverance, kindness, persist- 
ent faith in them, may yet wake them from dullnes 
and woo their minds to bright development. No^ 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 283 

unfreqiiently those who are slow at first become in 
time good students. 

But tlie path to manhood is not always by the way 
of school curriculums. The farm, the shop, the mart, 
the railroad, the ocean highway, are all in God's 
plan educational institutions, and in graduating strong 
men they compete not unfavorably with classic 
halls. Better above comparison that our boys, and 
our girls, too, have the opportunity to earn an 
honest living in industrial pursuits that call mind 
and body into healthful exercise than let them 
idle away their lives or drive them to unwilling 
tasks in the schools. Would not a course of in- 
dustrial school-training, encouraged if not required 
for all our youth, that should fit them to earn for 
themselves a living by manual labor, be practical 
wisdom ? 

6. It clearly follows that to come into harmony with 
the heavenly Father's plans for our children we should 
open the way to all classes of both sexes on equal 
terms to the highest educational advantages. Equality 
in probation does not insure for all equal success in 
probation. It treats all fairly — holds them only to 
the responsibility involved in their freedom and 
measured exactly by their opportunity. Neither 
w-ould the free admittance of all classes to schools of 
the highest grade insure for all equal attainments. 
But it w^ould be doing for all the best that can be 
done, j)utting education equally within their reach 



284 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

conditioned only upon their capacity and tlicir Avill- 
ingness to pay the price — honest work. 

The question remains Iiow far it is expedient to 
undertake the higlier education of our youth in state 
schools, and how far it is better to seek this end 
through institutions founded by private beneficence 
already in successful operation. It is an open ques- 
tion whether the work of higher education may not 
be more advantageously pursued in institutions under 
church auspices where Christian thought and work 
are not under bonds as they must be largely in state 
schools. Certainly if the State should furnish aid to 
any through denominational schools it should be with- 
out partiality. It need not be said that the State has 
no mission in the work of theological education. But 
is there not a better w^ay than to leave any part of the 
work of higlier education to the State ? Our ten, 
twenty, fifty, hundred millionaires could easily so 
endow existing schools — seminaries, colleges, and uni- 
versities — as to open them free of tuition and inci- 
dental expenses to all young men and women who 
should prove themselves worthy and equal to the 
required study. May not the liberal gifts such 
schools have already received from this source be the 
prophecy of princely endowments in the near future, 
to be used, not in multiplying costly architectural 
piles of granite and marble the very care of which 
increases expense to the student, but to be sacredly 
devoted to the one purpose of making the advantages 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 285 

offered free to all on the condition of their faithful 
improvement ? Show the common-sense business 
world how divinely perfect in its equities our Chris- 
tianity is, and the place of supremacy which it holds 
in the work of educating the highest type of men, 
and, though it will not make all our money-kings 
unselfish, beyond a doubt it will increase their gifts to 
the cause of Christian education many fold. What 
other use of hoarded millions offers such incentives to 
either an honorable or a selfish ambition ? 

Essential equality in school advantages would be 
Christian democracy in education, and it could not 
fail to attract to our schools, when conducted on this 
principle, the elect of our youth from all classes, and 
prepare them nobly for their places at the front as 
worthy leaders in society. Who can doubt that this 
would prove to be good political economy — even 
financially a wise investment ? 

How to secure for religion its rightful place in con- 
nection with our educational work is a difilcult prob- 
lem, upon which a word may be appropriate. A 
great point has been gained if it has been made clear 
that the principle of religion is the foundation upon 
which we must build in this work. It is not to be 
regretted that we meet every-where a strong public 
sentiment against sectarian influence in the schools, 
though unfortunately that sentiment often narrowly 
confounds sectarianism witli religion. It is legitimate 
to say that the clear recognition of the democratic 



286 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

spirit of Christianity, much more the dominance of 
this spirit in character, will go far toward the best 
sohition of this grave problem both by securing a 
liealthier public sentiment and by removing just oc- 
casion for jealousy. In the public schools the voice 
of the people should, of course, be properly regarded. 

But the outlook has some encouraging aspects. 
Christians have the education of the children, their 
own and many others, largely in their own hands. 
Our homes, our Sunday-schools, and our churches we 
may make as Christian as we will, and through them 
we may keep open doors of welcome to the children 
of the world who are sure to be attracted to us if our 
Christianity is that of the Son of God. Then, 
directly or indirectly, we have something to say in the 
selection of school committees, superintendents, and 
teachers. Happily, tlie universal public sentiment 
welcomes the choice for these places of men and 
women who are Christian in spirit. Moreover, the 
public sentiment as decisively condemns irreligion 
and immorality in the schools as it does sectarianism, 
while, at the same time, it gives strong sanction to the 
inculcation in the schools of the ethics of Christianity. 
Better, incomparably, the Christian spirit without the 
creed than an infallible creed without the Christ 
spirit. 

It is, however, very true that fuller religious in- 
struction than is practicable in our public schools or 
in our Sunday-schools is an imperative demand in the 



THE WORK OF EDUCATING MEN. 287 

work of educating men. It is not meet to give large 
place in our educational system to the Greek and 
Roman classics and no place to the greater Christian 
classic of inspiration. Somewhere opportunity should 
be given for thorough study and instruction in the 
history, literature, and ethics of the Bible. It will 
not do to crowd this work upon the day divinely set 
apart for rest as well as worship. The purpose of the 
Sunday-school should be to present the practical and 
spiritual aspect of Scripture lessons, and to feed the 
people, young and old, with the milk and meat of the 
word rather than to task them with hard intellectual 
work. In our denominational seminaries the Bible 
should have place, perhaps as an elective, in the reg- 
ular work of the school week. But at present the 
seminary reaches only a minority, and witli them does 
not begin its work early enough for the best advan- 
tage. May not the Cliurch, Protestant alike with 
Catholic, reasonably claim her children from the pub- 
lic schools for an hour of each school day for religious 
and Bible instruction under her own care and at her 
own expense ? 

But after all that the Church and the Sunday- 
school can do to insure for religion the supremacy 
which belongs to it in the education of our children 
in order to the best result the Christian home must 
ever hold the place of prominence. 



XX. 

THE BASIS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REFORM. 

19 



OUTLINE. 



Christianity and Democracy. 

Advance a Reasonable Demand. 

Perils of Democracy Avitliout Religion. 

This Reform Demands Spiritual Regeneration and 

Transformation. 
Christ the Perfect Democratic Leader. 
Monarchical Conceptions of the Puritan Fathers. 
Methodism and the Republican Movement. 
The Dawn. 



THE BASIS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REFORM. 



CHRISTIANITY AXD DEMOCRACY. 

'^ The unit of our system is the individual man." 
Til this word of an American statesman we have the 
nut principle of true democracy. The State was 
made for the man, not the man for the State. Every 
individual man who has not forfeited his birthrio^ht 
OLir democratic government accounts a citizen, and, 
when true to itself, seeks to protect him in the exer- 
cise of his freedom and to open to him the way to 
make the most of himself. Of course, in carrvino; 
into effect this high purpose all human governments 
come short. The men of no nation are wise enough 
nor good enough nor 23owerful enough to insure for 
every subject perfect conditions. But what the best 
of earthly rulers do for their subjects imperfectly the 
Son of God is able to do for all perfectly. Christian- 
ity gives perfect guarantee of best and equal 023portu- 
nity to us all to accomplish the work required of us. 
Christ is, therefore, our example and inspiration in 
e^very advance movement in social and national life. 

Christian believers need not be reminded that 
there is no true reform which is not toward Chris- 
tianity and in the lead of Christianity. If the religion 



202 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHKISTIAXITY. 

wliicli lias coiiie down troin lieaven were monarcliical 
in its spirit and purpose, necessitarian in its philoso- 
vh\, and mechanical or dvnannc in its methods the 
problem of reform would be how most advantageously 
to subject man to irresistible law and to molding 
Cliristian appliances sure in their working. Bat man 
is no sucli thing of necessity, and Christianity is no 
such arbitrary, artiticial svstem. Trne reform means 
more freedom for man becanse man was made for 
freedom and becanse freedom tinds in Christianity 
its vitalizing principle. TThat Cliristianity has already 
done for mankind in this direction has created this 
wide demand for advance. 

adva^nce a keasoxable demaxp. 

The oniv wav to make a hiiuKin beino: contented in 
bondage is never to awaken in liim a concepition of 
freedom : the sure wav to arouse in him a desire for 
freedom, which nothing less than the full measure 
God made him to enjoy can satisfy, is to give him a 
taste of freedom. This explains the apparent incon- 
sistency tliat in tliis age of unprecedented success to 
tlie cause of freedom, and even from the lands of 
freedom's greatest triumphs, should come the loudest 
calls for more freedom, and with it essential equality. 
It is a ofood deal more than slaves ever dreamed oi 
that intelligent laborers of to-day, with the ballot 
already in their hands, are claiming. The bondman 
thouo^ht of little more than libertv from his chains. 



BASIS OF SOCIAL AXD POLITICAL REFORM. 293 

Of equality with his master he had no conception. 
But it is equality before the law, in the school, in the 
Church, and as a fair sharer with the capitalist in all 
productive industries, which the free laborer now 
asks. And he will not be denied. 

Of course, the claims of even the well-meaning are 
not always reasonable. There are reformers and re- 
formers — anarchists, communists, socialists. Christian 
socialists, and nationalists — all human and erring, yet 
at the extremes as unlike as are rayless night and the 
dawn that heralds day. Reason as yet bears relatively 
but a small part as an antecedent to human activity. 
But the cry of struggling millions for larger liberty 
and more equality lias a case in the court of justice, 
and it will be supreme folly in us — a crime against 
the divine in man — to disregard this cry. Turn away 
from this problem we cannot, for it faces us at every 
turn we make. 

PERILS OF DEMOCRACY WITHOUT JCST CONCEPTIONS OF 

RELIGION. 

We must not forget that democracy has its perils. 
Without religion or with false conceptions of religion, 
which lead to fatalistic notions of man, it is sure to de- 
generate into anarchy. We may hope for success only 
by coming into harmony with the divine method for 
the evolution of perfected society. The expectations 
of many have their bases too much in necessitarian 
conceptions of both philosophy and religion to make 



294 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tlieir literal realization either practicable or desirable, 
and they are likely to prove in as wide contrast with 
the plans of God for ns as were the notions among 
the Jews as to the kingdom of God to be set np by 
the Messiali. 

Does the progress of the work seem slow ? Let us 
remember it is a greater work Christ has undertaken 
than to nmke us his partisans or to subject us to his 
power. If he had yielded to the temptation in the 
wilderness to seek the popular favor doubtless he 
might have sjoeedily made himself political master of 
the kingdoms of the world. But that would at best 
have meant only outw^ard, transient reform, wath no 
enduring advantage. The Son of God allied himself 
to the children of men that he might renew them in 
his own likeness. 

THE REFORM NEEDED DEMANDS A SPIRITUAL REGEN- 
ERATION AND TRANSFORMATION. 

The germ of the great reform is apparent in the 
announcement to Mary of a miracle Child to be born 
to her who should be " called the Son of the Highest," 
and in the message to Joseph, '' Thou shalt call his 
name Jesus, for he shall save his people from tlieir 
sins." It was heralded in the sono; of the anp-els on 
the first Christmas. Yea, in prophetic vision it was 
already real when the inspired seer declared, ^' He 
came to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the 
opening of the doors to them that are bound." The 



BASIS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REFORM. 295 

democratic creed of the great Liberator was epito- 
mized in his answer to his forerunner, John the Bap- 
tist, " The blind receive their sight, the lepers are 
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised np, the poor 
have the Gospel preached to them." The highest pnr- 
pose of his mission is voiced in liis terse statement, 
"If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 

CHRIST THE PERFECT DEMOCRATIC LEADER. 

Christ was the only perfect democratic Leader who 
has appeared among men. It was not the charm of 
perfected society w^hich drew him from the heavens 
to sojonrn among men, but the need of perishing sin- 
ners ; and throughout his wonderful life it was ever 
need, not greed, struggling industry, not wealth or 
place or power, which attracted him. It is notewor- 
thy that of all the civil rulers of history it is the one 
alone who in spite of human infirmities carried in the 
popular estimate niost of the spirit of Christ into his 
administration whose name every-where awakens a 
feeling of profoundest admiration and love — our own 
Abraham Lincoln. Such was Christ as he lived a 
man among men, and such has been the spirit of true 
Christianity through all the Christian ages. 

MONARCHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF THE PURITAN FATHERS. 

The Christianity our noble fcithers brought to the 
New World helped much to prepare the way for 
political freedom, b}^ exalting the will of God above 



296 THE DEMOCHACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

all luiinan authority, and yet more by the leaven- 
ing power of Christian cliaracter better than their 
creed. But the speculative philosophy and tlieology 
of these worthy pioneers were quite out of harmony 
wuth the fundamental principles of democratic gov- 
ernment. For subjection under protest to the wdll of 
earthly potentates it substituted in theory tlie un- 
qualified subjection of the wliole man, hand, heart, 
will, and all, to the irresistible sway of an infinite 
Sovereign. Of course, thinking minds found no rest 
under this conflict. Before the struo:o;le of the Revo- 
lution the Unitarian reaction had begun. But that 
was not a change to a higher conception of the free- 
dom which carries w^itli it responsibility. The Uni- 
tarians were clear in their negation of predestinarian- 
ism, but on the affirmative side of Christian doctrine 
and philosopliy they have always been vague. 

METHODISM AND THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT. 

It was under these conditions that the Methodist 
fathers contemporaneously with the founding of the 
republic entered this great field. They had a single 
eye to their one work of saving men from their sins 
and building them up in the Christian faith. But 
nnconsciously they bore at the same time a large part 
in meeting an essential condition of success in the re- 
publican movement. ,^ They found in the churches 
known as evangelical, for the greater part, the un- 
challenged conception of Christianity to be sternly 



BASIS OF SOCIAL AXD POLITICAL REFORM. 297 

monarcliical. The dominant idea of God was tliat of 
an almighty king who was snpposed to determine nn- 
conditionally the actions and characters and destinies 
of all men. In bold antagonism to this misconception 
of Christianity Methodism proclaimed with assnrance 
the freedom of man as a moral agent to choose and act 
for himself, and a perfect redemption through Christ, 
free alike to all, and equal in its provisions for all. 

We may not to-day claim for Methodism a monop- 
oly of this larger, brighter view of Christian doctrine, 
nor indeed that all Methodists have grasped in its full 
breadth this foundation truth as tauglit by the great 
Master and perfectly exemplified in his character and 
leadership. Bat surely it was given to Wesley and 
Asbury and their coadjutors and successors to be lead- 
ers in a great revival of Christian thought in this 
direction, as well as in the great spiritual awakening 
of modern times. This true conception of Christian- 
ity as a perfect salvation equally for all men, and at the 
same time holding n:ien to the high responsibilities 
of freedom, came to many with the vividness of a new 
revelation ; and it has worked a revolution in all the 
departments of Christian endeavor. Meantime it has 
been a great conserving and progressive power in our 
national life. 

THE DAW^X. 

A perfect democracy w^ould be a state in which the 
Christian la\y, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself," should be enthroned in the hearts of all the 



298 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

people — a Cliristocracj. That may not come in com- 
pleteness in a character-forming school of probation. 
But when we have done with concessions to the pagan 
philosophy of necessity, and the faith of loyal souls 
generally shall take strong hold of the truth that 
Christianity is uncompromisingly democratic, then 
will come, not just the political and industrial revolu- 
tion some are dreaming of — a paradise of weaklings 
without moral personality — yet surely the dawn of a 
new" era of advance and victory on all the lines of 
human activity. That good time is coming. Heaven 
speed the day — for the Church's sake, that her faith 
and love may be liberated and divinely enlarged ; for 
our country's sake, that the perils, many and great, 
Avhich come with the gains of democracy work not its 
overthrow ; and for the people's sake of all lands, that 
every-where freedom and loyalty may have their 
rights and men true to the image of God be known 
as the only heroes ! 



y 



XXT. 

A WORD WITH HERBERT SPENCER. 



OUTLINE. 



Theories of Evolution as Related to Freedom. 

Mr. Spencer Treats of the Evolution of Man under 

Natural Law Onl3\ 
Facts which He la'nores. 



A WORD WITH HERBERT SPENCER. 



EYOLUTIOX AS RELATED TO FREEDOM. 

The wide acceptance by modern scientists of the 
doctrine of evolution in close alliance witli tlie dogma 
of necessity demands a word in connection witli our 
question. But, if we would meet tlie issue thus raised 
to advantage, we must discriminate. Evolution may 
well protest against the treatment it receives from its 
friends. Science, no more than Christianity, is respon- 
sible for the short-sightedness of its disciples. As 
related to freedom there are four clearlv distiniruished 
theories of evolution — the atheistic, the agnostic, the 
theistic necessitarian, and the theistic proper, which 
last sees at the same time in all the realms of beino- a 
God immanent and active, and, upon occasion, mira- 
cle-working, and, in the realm of responsible charac- 
ter, the co-working of man as a consciously free moral 
agent. 

It need not be said that atheistic and agnostic evo- 
lutionists are all necessitarian in philosophy. There 
is needed, however, a more distinct recognition of the 
inseparable connection between theism and freedom. 
It is beginning to be seen that theism and necessity 
are contradictory terms. The Christian conception of 



302 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

God is that of an infinite Father and a righteous moral 
Sovereign. Tlie Christian conception of man is that 
of a subject free moral agent, and, conditioned on the 
right use of his freedom, of a child of God. Both 
these conceptions every theory of necessity logically 
excludes. As might be expected, avowedly necessi- 
tarian thinJcers of to-day are generally non-Christian 
in belief. It should be frankly admitted that to this 
class belong some of the ablest and most triith-loving 
explorers in the fields of natural science. In the 
front rank, if not foremost among them, is Herbert 
Spencer. A word with him will be, in essentials, a 
word with all necessitarian scientists. Mr. Spencer 
treats of 

MAN AS THE SUBJECT OF NATURAL LAW ONLY. 

I have not much occasion for controversy with Mr. 
Spencer, for he has not brought his splendid abilities 
to the discussion of a higher than animal freedom. 
He finds no such question to be considered. His phi- 
losophy accounts for man only as a superior animal, and 
all he has undertaken is to describe the method, as he 
views the case, of natural law in his evolution. That 
lie has brought to his task in high degree ability, learn- 
ing, industry, and, in his special province of natural 
history, candor, all wnll agree. But he knows nothing 
of any higher realm than that of natural law, nor of 
any higher freedom than liberty of action in obe- 
dience to natural law. 



A WORD WITH HERBERT SPENCER. 303 

It is true Mr. Spencer attributes to man will and 
volitional activity as he understands tlie words. But 
witli him, evidently, volitional action is only conscious 
action. In common with all clear-headed necessita- 
rians he regards will as nothing else than the dominant 
feeling or inclination which prompts to action. " We 
speak of will as something apart from the feehng or 
feelings which, for the moment, prevail over others ; 
whereas it is nothing but the general name given to 
the special feeling that gains supremacy and deter- 
mines action." — Principles of Psychology, p. 503. 

Mr. Spencer claims the universal reign of necessity, 
but he makes good the claim only where there is no 
room for question. He ignores a higher freedom than 
" that every man is at liberty to do wliat he desires to 
do, supposing there are no external hinderances,'' as 
impossible, affirming that " the dogma of free-will is 
negatived by the analysis of consciousness." (Page 
500.) And in the realm of his own vision Mr. Spen- 
cer is right. Necessity is universal in the world of 
natural law, the only world he recognizes. If man 
were nothing more than his philosophy makes him 
to be lie would be but a thing of necessity — a vital- 
ized automaton. But against Mr. Spencer's negation 
of elective freedom we may confidently put tlie clear 
and universal consciousness of mankind of moral ob- 
ligation, the analysis of wliicli gives us at once this 
higher freedom as the chief factor. To regard this 
clearest consciousness of every developed mind as 



304 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIAXITY. 

illusive would be to make man a fraud in the universe 
and all science of mind impossible. 

Mr. Spencer sees clearly tlie cmn-ulative argument 
for evolution under natural law, though frankly ad- 
mitting that his conclusions are reached by a very 
indirect course of inferences. Let us, in justice to 
ourselves and to truth, as well as to him, grant all that 
may be fairly claimed as certain or probable. What- 
ever of truth there is in evolution is as divine as 
though revealed in the book, and belongs to the 
Christian as well as to the scientist. It is disingenu- 
ous and suicidal to blind ourselves to the argument 
for evolution because we do not find it tauo;ht in our 
Bible, or because its advocates are not all Christian in 
belief, or because some have claimed too much for it, 
or because to our short-sighted vision there are some 
missing links in the chain, or even because w^e see 
chasms which it w^ere absurd to claim could be bridged 
by processes of natural law. Because evolution can- 
not account for everv thino; in a well-ordered universe 
independently of God it by no means follow^s that it 
may not be w^ithin the sphere of natural law, the uni- 
form method by which God works, nor that there may 
not be in the realm of character a higher law of spir- 
itual evolution. 

FACTS WHICH HE IGNORES. 

But Mr. Spencer is quite as blind to the argument 
for theism and freedom as are his extreme opponents 



A WORD WITH HERBERT SFEN'CER. 305 

to the supremacy of natural law as the divine method 
w^ithin its proper sphere. Is it reason that thinks to 
account for a well-developed man in full possession 
of himself, in whose breast is enthroned the law of 
love, by the same processes of natural law as w^e trace 
the pedigree of a dog? Is it sound pliilosophy to 
ignore the great facts which distinguish man — per- 
sonality, freedom, responsibilitj^, praiseworthiness, 
blameworthiness, assurance of faith in immortalitj^ ? 

It is not in the superior intelligence of man that 
the absurdity of the hypothesis wliich would make 
him wholly the product of natural law appears. In 
this particular the immature man may not be more 
widely removed from the dog than is the dog from 
the snail. But manifestly the dog, equally with the 
snail and the polyp, is under the sole dominion of nat- 
ural law, and the man certainly is not. Of nothing 
else is he so assured in consciousness as at times that 
he is an accountable being under moral law. What- 
ever his connection in natural history with the system 
of natural life there has come to him a voice from 
heaven calling him to the higher freedom of a moral 
agent and a child of God. 

To trace the process in the development in man of 

motion, feeling, and intelligence, even if done fully 

and infallibly, is not, as some materialistic writers 

would have us think, to account for the process itself. 

The infant man, as Alexander Bain suggests, may not 

unnaturally first learn his power to act by the prompt- 
20 



806 THE DEMOCRACY OF CHRISTIAxMTY. 



iiigs of nature in liis contact with nature. Here may 
be tlie birth of his consciousness in lowest form of 
liberty to act. He may, to borrow Bain's illustration, 
iirst discover his power to act by accidentally coming 
in contact w^itli his nurse lying beside him and so find 
relief from the chillness which has thrown him, arms, 
legs, and body, into spontaneous motion. He learns 
at once where to seek warmth and that he can move 
toward it. Yery soon he comes naturally to hitcli 
toward the nurse whenever he is affected with a sensa- 
tion of chillness. He continues to act under the same 
law of natural inclination through the years of early 
childhood, and under this law, within his limited 
sphere, he has a child's consciousness of liberty to act. 
As he advances toward inaturity this sphere enlarges, 
and at length the providence and Spirit of God lead 
him up into the realm of moral agency, where he ex- 
periences the birth of a new consciousness — a con- 
sciousness that in some thino-s he ouo-ht to resist 
inclination and to use his power in loyalty to a power 
rightfully above him. And this consciousness of 
ought and ought not is, and of necessity must be, 
bounded by the limits of his consciousness of power. 
We can never be under obligations to do that which 
we are not conscious of power to do. 

In this consciousness of moral obligation against 
natural inclination, and here only, are met the condi- 
tions of elective freedom. Every other question that 
appeals to us for decision is essentially one of degree, 



A WORD WITH HERBERT SPEXCER. 307 

upon which the mind halts only to discover which is 
urged by the stronger incentive. The conflict is not 
at all one of will ; it is simply, between rival feelings, 
which is dominant. But here, in the antagonism 
between duty and self as attested by universal experi- 
ence, tlie mind finds a real alternative and the will- 
power its high occasion. 

Confounding the will, or the self-controlling, re- 
sponsible power of the mind, with the feeling which 
for the time happens to be dominant by no means 
voids all tlie results of Mr. Spencer's faithful toil in 
the fields of science, but it is the root error which runs 
as a vicious thread through his pliilosophy. 

In liis special department of natural history Mr. 
Spencer is a master and is entitled to the respect and 
gratitude of all truth-lovers for his valuable services. 
But there is a higher realm of human life, that of 
personality and freedom, where he has yet to learn 
the alphabet of truth. 



THE END. 



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